love life; live to love

sometimes we need the reminder:

!!! !!! !!!

i've got some feelings to share. listen here ---> Play Recording

(ETA: i wish i were more eloquent and that i'd thought out more of what i wanted to say, but i initially recorded this as a note to myself for later, to turn into a longer piece of writing, but after listening to it, and hearing for myself the tones of voice and how they changed when talking about different things, it felt right to leave it as is, as rough as it is, because of the emotions present in my voice. i want to preserve the sound of happiness as it was captured there, in case i ever need a reminder.

also, our anniversary date would have been August 8, but i couldn't wait to get this out there!)

remission

"you just have to cut out all the bad stuff from your life. [the bad people in your life are] like a cancer. cut it out so the rest of you can thrive."

-my dad, giving me post-breakup advice. 

he is so smart, and so so right.

he advised me to get rid of everything that would remind me of Ben and never look back. focus on looking ahead and getting back to happy. he's right. Ben was a soul-sucking cancer. working my way towards healing and beating this thing. i will be a survivor.

life is too short to waste any more of it on you

i finally told my parents about what happened. they were amazingly supportive, clear-headed and wise. i don't know why i expected any differently.

the best advice they could have given me was this: life is too short to be unhappy and life is too precious to let bad people break you down and make you feel less worthy of happiness than you are. forget it like a bad dream and move on. you owe it to yourself to fight for what's yours, for the happiness you deserve.

god, i love them.

and they are so right. onward! upward! the past is behind me and i'm not looking back.

living, will

death has been on my mind a lot lately. well, more than usual. ever since i was a kid, i've lived in fear of death, lived in fear of that great expanse of unknown beyond my last breath, in fear of my parents' death, haunted by the sudden passing of friends and family gone too soon. who was it that said life is just the act of dying? or "the day we are born we begin to die"? i hate to think of my life as a shadow negative of this inevitability, but there can be no denying it. i think learning to live is in many ways learning how to die.

this has become more pressing lately. when my Uncle Tony passed away ... spring of 2009, my entire foundation was rocked. it was one of my first years truly living away from home - out of college, working my first real-life, "grown-up" job as a teacher in a public middle school in south central - and i got the news in the middle of a school day, maybe it was even a wednesday. this was the thing i'd always feared, my entire life: leaving home and being away and alone and having to truly assume adulthood when i'd only previously been playing the part. acting like an "adult" in front of a room of insane and belligerent special ed 6th graders, while your entire understanding of reality and space/time is being torn asunder around you is truly an initiation into "adulthood" by means of trial by fire. i have never wanted to punch an eleven-year-old special needs child so much in my entire life.

that first experience of death, trying to understand the definitiveness, the finalness, the never-again-ness, changed me. it ripped the fabric of logic and reason, made my persistent daily wants and needs and desires seem cruel, selfish, terrible. i disgusted myself, felt disgusted at other people, at my/our insistence on living. my hunger pangs, my exhaustion, my cravings for warmth or kindness or whatever were just constant reminders of my own body's persistent fight to stay alive, to feed itself, to rest, to recover. all this pained and aggravated me, since it was also a reminder that these were things my uncle once did, and now won't.

the day after i heard the news, i remember, i emerged from my dark room, where i'd spent the majority of the day [which makes me think the news might have occurred closer to a weekend, or that i was still doing this - violently weeping - several days after the fact] on my bed in a fetal position, my body pinched in on itself in a full-body sob, weeping uncontrollably and relentlessly, and walked outside to get some fresh air (again, the body's urge to do what it needs to survive; in this case, getting some air and sunlight and resuming an upright, healthy posture). the sight of seagulls flying above the palm trees overhead, the sun shining in an almost cloudless sky, the onslaught of terrifying LA rush-hour traffic - all seemed to be terrible, disrespectful, indignant external reminders that life goes on; this day is, in all other respects, just like any other.

---

i have been reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, a birthday gift from my brother this past year. i don't remember how i came to hear about this book, but one day at work i was reading about different psychological phenomena, and "magical thinking" was mentioned, and the book's premise interested me, and since i've spent some part of the last year reading "award-winning" books, i asked for it for christmas. it has been... an informative book. well-researched and well-written, definitely, and interesting, although i hesitate to say "pleasurable," since of all the effects it has had on me, it's probably inspired an even deeper and more paranoid ideation with death, the "act" of dying, and living.

one of the ideas from Didion's book that's really stuck is the idea that the dying person can foretell their death, even in cases accidental or sudden. "Only the dying man can tell how much time he has left." this is, in some ways, a comfort, especially to those who have lost a loved one in tragic accidents, to know that perhaps they knew their time was coming. but, in my case, it's been a terrible fear-enhancer. suddenly, things my parents or friends do, like tell me they love me in an exceptional way, or giving me an important document, seem like portents of doom. and i know that's a terrible thing, like, the prime example of letting fear of death control your life and thoughts. i know it is the mark of a coward to live in constant fear of death, but, here i am. and what to do?

naturally, the thing to do is to prepare. this constant, unebbing thought that "we all know when our time has come" has, of course, come to make me think that perhaps i am about to die. (and even as i write this, i wonder to myself, will typing it make it even more true? will uttering this aloud make it come true, or stave it off?) does the fact that i persist on this notion indicate that i am nearing death, that this book and this idea, given to me so recently, is relevant for a reason, that reason being that something terrible is about to happen? i can't help wondering these things, even though i know it makes me crazy.

last month, my partner Ben lost his younger brother Andrew in a terrible accident. he had been living abroad for nearly 2 years, travelling and teaching in China and Taiwan. he was on a ten-day bike journey around the island of Taiwan, during his 2-week Chinese New Year holiday, when he was struck by an old man driving a van. Andrew died. (typing that still hurts, because it hasn't yet felt real. typing that feels like betrayal, like i've given up hope Andrew can still come back, like i've turned my back on him because i've accepted this reality, even though my mind and heart (and Andrew) live now in a reality separate from what that sentence means). in the days and weeks following, friends and family who knew Andrew have been grappling to understand what happened. friends received Christmas cards from him just days after the accident. i looked back on our exchanges, scrutinized emails, trying to examine them for clues that Andrew, in some way, knew. Andrew and i spoke via email just days before it happened, and i talked to him about visiting Taiwan in the summer, with Ben, and he replied that he was so excited for us to come, he couldn't wait to show us around. the day before the accident, i wanted to post something on his Facebook, commenting on one of his pictures, saying something about how he looked so much like his dad. i didn't, i hesitated and then decided not to, because i wasn't sure how he'd respond or take the comment. i wonder now, if i'd posted it, if he would have paused in the morning to read and respond, and would have thus been a minute or two behind on the road when the van swerved off and hit him where he was, without the comment.

Andrew kept a bucket list, or as he called it, a "to-do list." he didn't want to be an old man looking back at his life with regret. did he know? even if his to-live list wasn't a premonition, he understood that life is precious and fragile and not to be wasted - a profoundly inspiring wisdom borne from an acknowledgment of death; Andrew knew how to live. this is what i want for myself and for my fear of death, a greater appreciation and predilection for living.

Andrew's bucket list was a physical list he checked off and added to. i love that, i love that there are documents that speak to his life and his goals. now that we've lost Andrew (where did you go?) these documents - to-do-lists, journals, emails, blog posts, Facebook - are what we have left, what we can return to. this is my document.*

these days, we are all susceptible to getting lost in the daily grind, on focusing on ends rather than means, and thinking about a distant future rather than enjoying the present. i think living in the constant shadow of death can mean reclaiming life, and i intend to do that.


*i wrote previously about maintaining an e-life thru internet documents here, on my very first blog.

all that glitters is gold

ever since a friend told me about golden birthdays, when we were probably 7 or 8 years old, i've been sorta latently anticipating it, slowly building it into this Moment that would like, validate my life. like, i kept telling myself by the time of my 26th birthday, my golden birthday, that i will have figured my life out.

because 26, to a 7 or 8-year-old, seemed so old. and i remember wondering at the time what kind of person i would be in what seemed like such a distant future (2011 sounded futuristic in the early 90s). would i be married? would i have kids by then? what would i be doing? how tall would i be? would i still have the same friends and enjoy the same books, where would i live? would i finally have pets by the age of 26?

as a kid, i figured by the time i became a 26-year-old, by the time of my golden birthday, i would have my shit figured out. i would have grown out of insecurities and achieved some dreams of mine, that surely by 26, life would be a little less rocky, i'd be a little more sure of myself, i'd be, you know, an adult.

another thing: the reason, i think, i put so much emphasis on my golden birthday as a kid was because earlier in my childhood, one of my teachers at the Montessori school told our entire class during circle time about the Hale-Bopp comet. apparently, this amazing astronomical event, this once-in-a-lifetime event, had just occurred the previous night and i had totally missed it. what was i doing!? this knowledge, that i would be dead the next time Hale-Bopp passed into visibility, was just too tragic and agonizing for me to handle as a small child. i think i cried thinking about myself dead in the ground while a magnificent meteor passed overhead and me without the eyes to see it, and then maybe possibly i threw up a little on the inside. henceforth i took to staring a lot at the sun, even though my teachers and parents told me to look away, and stood outside once in the winter with my dad observing a lunar eclipse - i had just taken a shower and it was so cold outside that my hair froze stiff in a rolled bun on top of my head.

basically, my golden birthday was my personal Hale-Bopp comet. i knew i was only going to get one chance at this in my lifetime, and i'd better get it right.

but you know what? i thought what i wanted on my birthday was luxurious, extravagant celebrations, a gilded cake, to be swaddled in gold lurex and lame and parade around like a Macy's day float. but what it turned out i needed most was to spend my birthday with my family and allow myself to be reminded how wonderful small moments can feel and how these moments can erase all the uncertainty i have about my life. every little day is a Hale-Bopp, you know? and i'd rather live my life appreciating the beauty of a million everyday stars than lament forever one shooting star.

yoga lessons

a great benefit of practicing yoga (vs. doing) is all the really great lessons it teaches you about Life. more on that later.

for now, an example of what i mean:
at the end of your yoga practice, it is extremely important to rest in Savasana.

lots of people don't fully understand/respect this last phase of their yoga practice, and skip out of class early to go about their hectic lives again. yoga is about savoring your body's capabilities, challenging it with effort and maximizing its potential, and then rewarding it with rest.

my current yoga teacher, who has become a Yoda-like mentor to me, is wonderful because she emphasizes the importance of all these aspects equally. yoga is really about slowing down to appreciate what we take for granted - our breath, our mobility, the gift of life, and being present in our bodies. Savasana is the most wonderful time to stop and reflect, to sink into the breath, and with each breath, to feel more deeply connected to the earth and your body.

this is a lesson we can all heed and apply to the rest of our lives, even off the mat. when i go to sleep each night, i try to breathe deep, stretch and spread my limbs wide, allow my head to sink into the pillow and allow my jaw and face to relax. it's the end of the day, you've done what you can with the time you were given, and now it's time to rest. i let that be my meditative prayer to my body and my spirit each night, and it's helped me (on the nights i can remember to do so with intention) to have a more restorative sleep.

and as with yoga, and with sleep, so it is with the work day. i've done all i can, now it's time to go home and rest! ;-)

peace be with all of you,
stephan!e

life imitates art

“But maybe all art is about just trying to live on for a bit. I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

– Banksy

i feel lost. like in the last few months my spirit has cleaved in two, the rotten depressed and dark parts remaining here while the other bits floated away, too light and airy and dreamy to be bound to these desolate remains. "O... these fragments I have shored against my ruins." sometimes i feel like i can see the other half of me off in a distance, or i feel like i am that distant self looking back at the miserable remains and pitying her. it becomes hard to recognize myself in a mirror. how do i get those lost parts of me back?

as a kid i would lie awake in bed at night, imagining death and the unrelenting continuance of time without being able to participate in it, of lives without my presence. of being forgotten. i didn't want fame, but i didn't want to get lost in time and forgotten. i think this is the fear that underlies the pursuit of fame – a desire to never die.

the other night i lay in bed, sobbing because i could feel that sense of dying, could feel my loosening grip on my dreams, ambitions and aspirations from when i was a kid. i used to want to be something unusual, to be earth-shattering. i wanted to be destined for extraordinary things. and i felt, as i examined my life, considered the turn of recent events, and the availability of options before me, that my life had become rather extra ordinary. and as i thought of an image of myself as a child and the image of myself now, i began to cry. i never thought it would come to this, to being another unhappy adult stuck in a monotonous lifestyle with dreary rituals and nothing beautiful to celebrate. is this what happens? we grow old and comfortable and stuck in daily procedures and stop imagining different possibilities? i'm 25 and yet i feel old, weary, life-deprived, sick of the limited options (watch a movie, take a walk, read a book, work / be a mother, teacher, accountant, secretary). i don't want to be just another anything.

when i was young i wanted to be a writer, a dancer, a storybook illustrator. i wanted to be a wild animal. i wanted to make everlasting art.

and now all i make is dollar bills.

murderville

i had a really nice dream last night. the kind of dream that makes getting thru today a lot easier, just the thing i needed. in my dream i was at some dismal party and i wasn't having any fun, so my friend K asked me to sing a song (for karaoke, no less!) called "Escape from Murderville" or something like that by the Smashing Pumpkins (though the song itself sounded more like it was by the Talking Heads) and it was all about casting off the expectations for a (financially) successful mediocre suburban life, and starting to live with excitement and vigor and daring. we were singing and dancing to it and i actually felt some sense of relief.

i woke up still singing the song and googled "Murderville" but nothing useful came up. now i want to write this song and perform it in real life.

"buy a big house and forget who we were? fuck that, let's go dancing."
-stef

a resurrection is in order!

hello again, it is so good to be back!

apologies, explanations, and updates can delay another day; i am brought back to this happy medium to report a resurgence of happy feelings and an eager wish to write again!

for those who have followed my writing diligently and have persevered to this moment, i give my humblest gratitude. i am honored for your company and patience.

for those lost along the way, i can say that i understand, for i too, was lost for a long time. hopefully, they will return one day as i have.

the future brings many stories and exciting things to share! so let's not delay another moment!

starting with, what i find achingly appropriate, this live version of The Boss singing "Atlantic City" in Paris. so many things about this make me happy.

"everything dies, baby, that's a fact. but baby everything that dies, some day comes back..."

it is a fantastic day to be alive, my friends!!

gong shi

such a wonderful day.

woke up and made yummy breakfast wraps while listening to chinese language podcasts. cut a cantaloupe (a pleasurable activity for the senses, olfactory and tactile – a cantaloupe provides just enough resistance to warrant the use of a large knife, while maintaining ease of motion) then took a bike ride down to the beach (the ride was also a perfect blend of challenge and leisure at the proper moments, the breeze was salty-sweet and not too blustery on the way towards the ocean, allowing us to make record time on the path). ben and i spent an hour on the beach, splashing in the water and racing each other on the sand, watching the waves crashing in huge gusts as they hit the sandbar formed from weeks of rainwater draining sand into the ocean.

came home to clean up and drive east to celebrate chinese new year with my uncle and aunt. a fragrant pineapple in the backseat. eating lots of noodles and sticky rice cakes. playing bingo with 50 chinese gentle men and women, one drunk bingo rabble rouser and one elementary kid who kept winning all the prizes. we were in it to win it (a mini braided bamboo plant, that is).

driving back to the apartment, teaching ben how to count in mandarin, thinking to myself the whole time how happy and lucky i am, to be surrounded by such good people.

i feel sometimes that i can never cease in my amazement of how much beauty lies in the world around me. i see the grace of bodies, the delicate lines on faces and how they reveal smiles and the way people walk, or use their hands when talking, the way they put on a shoe or brush the hair out of their face or the way they chew their food and the way people laugh, and i think of the babies that we once were and i dunno, it just seems like such glorious probability that everything works out to such perfection. it overwhelms me with such marvellous awe that sometimes i mistake it for sadness. it makes life seem so precious, which is really something to be grateful for, even though being aware of it makes everything seem so precarious.

look! i am teaching ben how to speak mandarin!

desires!

yesterday, i felt revived. like someone had pulled me up from the bottom of a pool just in time, sucking air hard and deep into my lungs.

i wanted to write, and read beautiful things, i wanted to walk, dance, do a cartwheel on the sidewalk. i wanted to be a better teacher, be a better daughter, give the best hugs, make the best stir fry, and i wanted to create things.

i haven't felt that way in a long time, and it made me cry. tears from sadness or happiness, i don't know b/c it's the same (you cry because you're so happy you feel sad you weren't always like this). i was happy i've been writing again, sad that i hadn't written anything i could be proud of in a long time, eager to keep it up.

i want to collect people's stories. i want to help my 7th graders petition the school for things they care about. i want to find some felt and make finger puppets for my boyfriend's nephew. i want to give someone else a haircut. i want to make a valentine for a long distance friend. i want to pack a picnic and eat it somewhere exciting! i want to swim until i feel exhausted and fall asleep with my hair wet around my face.

i read parts of my blog today because i wanted to remember a certain voice i used to have, a way of thinking about life that i've recently recovered but had previously forgotten. i feel glad that if i disappeared one day, these words and stories would exist somewhere as a memorial, as a reminder.

i want to record ppl reading their stories. i want to start by recording my own.

lesson from my father #88: Love.

... That was as far as we got before we arrived in San Jose. I would like to hear more about Dad's life growing up and learning more about the family, which still remains a mystery. How did he meet Mom? How did he know, when did he know, that he loved her?

My cousin Sam told me his dad, my Uncle Danny, would wait for his mom after class every day at BYU. They were students and didn't have a lot of money, and the popular thing to eat on campus were these 15 cent hamburgers, because they were so cheap. But, they would always sell out really fast, and my Aunt Pearl, Sam's mom, had one of the later classes. So my Uncle Danny would go and save her a place in line. He won her over one 15 cent hamburger at a time.

Uncle Tony, Jocelyn explained at the funeral, met Aunt Evelyn when they both worked for China Airlines. He stood outside the terminal waiting for her every day, with an umbrella so she wouldn't get wet when it rained (and it rains a lot there). He did this for 7 months before she finally agreed to go out with him.

I love these stories about my uncles because it makes me nostalgic for the kind of love that is hard-earned and a long time coming, a dedicated, patient love. Hearing these courtship stories doesn't surprise me at all, knowing the kind of supportive, devoted husbands and fathers my uncles are, but they remind me that romance and love aren't make believe or reserved solely for the movies, that extraordinary deeds are performed by extraordinary gentelemen every day, and that I'm just so lucky to have such men in my life as uncles, as a father. They remind me that love isn't so much about the grand, dramatic gestures, but in the quiet dedication it takes to love someone so powerfully every day – the love it takes to be there every day with an umbrella when it rains, or the 30 cents when you haven't got a dime for yourself – and never lessen or waiver in knowing that you would be happy doing this every day for this person because it brings them happiness. Selfless, constant Love.

...As my dad pulled up to the curb to drop me off as he always does while he goes to look for parking, he tells me, as he always has, that the only thing he wants is "for [me] to be happy." My dad has never been controlling or even overbearingly curious, like my mom. He has been supportive of my decisions without injecting too much of his own opinion. As with my college decision, my decision on which high school to go to, and my career aspirations, so with my love life; Dad was there to offer support, but never judge. He just wants me to be happy.

Even though I'd heard it a million times before, this time I smiled, gripped his hand, and kissed him on the cheek. These last few weeks have been incredibly hard for my family, but, at the same time, it has made me remember we have so much to be grateful for. There is so much beauty, so much life, and so much love in the world, it's hard to remain sad for very long before you're overwhelmed with gratitude.


----

to all the fathers and the uncles, and especially to my own,
happy father's day.


with so much love,
stef

like a father to me

"you know Uncle Tony loved you, right stef? he loved you so much, and he was so proud of you."

i knew. i started sobbing. i knew, no one had to remind me. i never doubted for a minute that he loved me. i doubted if he knew just how much i loved him.

i loved the way he reminded me so much of my father, how the first time i met him, i knew they had to be brothers, they had the same face almost, but my uncle Tony had a friendlier smile. my dad doesn't smile much, he looks stern until he laughs, and then you know he's happy. my uncle Tony had a warm, honest smile. he didn't have to laugh before i knew i liked him. his smile was enough. quiet and calm happiness exuded from him, and i loved to be around that kind of presence. going to san francisco never meant going to Fisherman's Wharf, or the golden gate bridge. to me, it was always having one dinner with my uncle Tony, sitting near him, studying his every move with almost an obsessive curiosity, fascinated by this little man, a smaller version of my father. i wanted to sit next to him and pour him tea, watch him eat meat off bones, watch him talk to my dad and see them mirror each other's actions, both taking off their glasses to dab at the tears in the corners of their eyes from laughing too hard at the other's joke.

it was always such a pleasure to sit between the two of them and understand, through chemistry and some kind of beautiful, tangible magic, the meaning of family. between the two of them, i could fill in the gaps between the present and the past, imagine a childhood they shared, boyhood fraternity that spanned decades, continents, and many obstacles in between, and understand what my parents meant when they told me and my brother growing up that siblings are the most important people in your life.

when we say our goodbyes at the end of a trip to San Francsico, everyone goes around and gives thanks, love, good health wishes, and hugs to everyone else in the circle. the SF branch of our family lines up and me and my brother would go around the circle and embrace everyone. i always wanted to hug Uncle Tony first. it was important to me to show him in some way how grateful i was for him in my life, but lacking the adequate Mandarin to express my feelings, i had to opt for symbolism instead. even English words are hard to find for the wealth of sentiments and gratitude i have for him and what he meant to me and my father and what i could see as his wealth of presence in our entire family.

and now, especially, i am at a loss for words.

it's difficult learning grief for the first time. it is a complex emotion that you experience in layers. shock at first, almost a stupid ignorance of impending tragedy. when i first heard the news i didn't give it a second thought. it was like someone had just told me the time. i immediately thought "things are going to be fine. he's going to get better and we'll all be back to normal." and then details become apparent, gradually. one phrase leads to others, verb tenses change, suddenly i'm forced into speaking the language of death, phrases such as "the body", "the funeral," "brain dead." "was."

i can't comprehend how such a unique person can just suddenly disappear. will i never see that smile again, except in pictures and memories? will i never get to hug him goodbye again, squeezing his sweater vest with my forearm, watch him laughing with my dad (and will my dad ever laugh like that again?) feeling so selfish and stupid, all these days living so close by but without a visit, without a phone call? suddenly the phrase "visiting family in SF" makes me feel despondent, rather than hopeful and excited. i imagine a house empty of his presence and suddenly it's not a home with family (i can't see my dad there). i think about times when i was so close to where he was, and the last phone call, and how i didn't get to say everything i wanted to say, and how i'd always held it in my heart to tell him that i was thankful for him, that i wanted to make sure i eventually got the words right, but never knew a better way to say it than the first hug goodbye.

and now, just powerlessness. again, words don't feel right for such emotions. it just doesn't seem fair that life should go on as usual, when i feel my world is falling apart.

bold [sic] hate - ha ha

shield yr eyes!

(or keep em peeled! this shit changes real-time, bitches. so you can witness my minute-by-minute struggles with this jackass mother fucker. and warn me of broken links cuz this shit is wired to hit the fan...)

i have been up since 7 am working on this stupid piece of shit for my grad class, the last two hours spent trying to figure out how to format the fucking tables in the rubric section so it's not all bold.

fucking google docs.

nothing like a webquest to make you hate google, the internet, and life.

also: no food, no company, no time. low sleep, dirty hair, and my muscles wanna go for a ruuuuuuunn nn n n na nun.

there was so much else i could have done but instead this. and more.

still one unit plan, one lesson plan, and a fieldwork journal to write.

and i'm wondering about the state of nature and (hu)man. if the birds, cows, monkeys, and fleas all want to kill us, and the pigs now too, i think it's proof my hero was right:

"Your planet's immune system is trying to get rid of you."

fly high, fly straight. into the sun?
-stef

comparing urban experiences

a portrait i took on the bike path from Hyde Park to upper downtown.
this photograph always exemplified the entire chicago experience for me: contented solitude in the midst of vastness.

you know, it's funny. my friend asked me the other day why i love chicago so much. and i really didn't have a compelling reason for him, aside from the obvious: public transportation, access to concerts, Millennium Park. beyond that and i'd have to go into a longer history of my interaction with that place.

it's not like Chicago's weather is even that great. when i lived there in the summer of 2006 it was sweltering hot and humid, and i lived without a.c. i sucked it up and refused to pay for such extravagance, knowing that strength and endurance emerge from a furnace. when i spent hours in the hot summer sun at Pitchfork and Lollapalooza that year, i hardly even sweat it (idiomatically speaking, that is). when i think back on it, i don't even recall being uncomfortable with the heat. i wore skirts a lot that summer, cut my hair real short, wore bathing suits under my clothes on the weekends. i sweat a lot but learned to not mind so much.

and it's not like life was easy. i worked two jobs, one at the Field Museum and the other as a field journalist/videographer for an indy news group. it was a 9-5 gig with on-call jobs over the weekends and sporadic meetings in the evenings. i remember hating the desk job at the museum at first, but then learning ways of using the space as a resource and finding my own projects to work on. i was never bored and never felt overworked. in fact, i recall working all day on a net neutrality video on a Saturday, from the 1 o'clock lunch with a co-worker that inspired the need for action, walking home writing a script (/rant) in my head, getting back to the apartment, starting up the camera, and recording/editing until 3 am in the morning, just for fun, because the project meant something to me. there were endless reports and meetings to do at the Field as well, but they were always fascinating and exciting and diverse enough in nature that it never became stifling.

it was the first time i'd ever lived in a big city, too. and i was by myself, without a car, without any friends or family in the city, no knowledge of how public trans worked. i was scared to take buses and trains at night. scared to leave the apartment after sun down. it was the first time i'd lived in an apartment (and in the worst part of town!) it was my first time grocery shopping for myself, the first time cooking (or attempting to) for myself. it was my first time using a gas stove, and i was afraid of gas leaks so never ended up using it. this is how my diet came to consist of mostly cold and raw foods for 3 months of my life. i was practically a live vegan, but i ate a lot of cheese and crackers. it was the first time i was overwhelmed with the possibilities of so many things at once, and i was so completely new to the experience of all of it.

but, that was the year i walked everywhere. and, when i got tired of walking, i found a couple who was willing to lend me a bike for the summer, and i rode along Lake Michigan and explored the city beaches. that was the year i joined Critical Mass and made 1,000 friends at once. that was the year i did yoga after work on the floor of a Maori house exhibit in the museum, and again in Millennium Park on weekend mornings, saluting the sun thru metallic beams. i spent afternoons walking thru art museums or photographing street performers. i read a book a week. i drew! i wrote poetry and listened to music. i danced. i took 30 minute train rides to chinatown to eat mango fried rice from a bamboo bowl. and that was the year i accidentally stranded myself in the worst part of town when the trains stopped running. it was the year i learned to make salsa from scratch and all-natural ingredients, and the year i fell asleep listening to Band of Horses' Funeral almost every night.

it's amazing to me to remember all of this, and there is still so much i could say. and though i have a penchant for reminiscing, this is hardly nostalgia at all, memory imbued with illusion from the passage of time. for though i never ate warm foods, and never had a.c., and was always working and walking and alone, i never felt unhappy, unfull, uncomfortable, or hungry. i was restless for more, but always well-rested, my skin was glowing and i felt young and alive and vibrant.

---

compare with now: i live with a childhood friend, but we hardly talk. i feel alone most days, even though i have many friends in the city and family nearby as well. i have a car but i'm terrified of driving it. LA traffic scares me and driving with the windows down is no longer considered part of a pleasurable experience. i lament missing good concerts b/c the venues are far away and the shows expensive. i have a fully functional kitchen and though i've gotten good at making fod for myself, i don't enjoy it, and hardly have the appetite for anything i make. still, i feel constantly hungry, go to bed hungry some nights. i don't sleep well, i toss and turn, waking up worrying it's 7 am when it's not even 3:30 am. i watch a lot of tv, hardly ever read, and even though i am always working or preparing to work, i never feel i've accomplished anything.

and LA's weather is fine, but i hardly ever enjoy it.

proposition: blogging as life preserver

i've had a lot of conversations lately in which my motives for blogging were called into question. and though i find it hard, usually, to think so metacognitively about the reasons for my writing, i realized today that it's a tree in the forest kinda thing.

if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?

i remembered this post i wrote in the beginning of my foray into blogging, and how i was thinking about death and the ability of the internet to preserve experience and writing.

this digital age is a mausoleum, which is a word i love, because it sounds like what it means: "death museum." we produce so many artifacts of our lives, but at the same time these artifacts exist mostly in the ether. we write emails, dozens a day, these all go into mailboxes, each of us with mailboxes thousands of emails full. there's a permanence but also an invisibility to this kind of production. while it exists and accumulates, it so easily disappears. someone dies, their email address and inbox goes with them. all those MB's of virtual space and productivity and creation lost, irrecoverable. and here, i hesitate again, because this virtual medium has the capacity to recover and revive, just as easily as it can be erased.

i want to remember things clearly, i don't want things to fade!

the wonderful thing about this is that digital technologies are allowing us to preserve little mummies of ourselves all over the interwebs (which sounds kind of gross, but admit it, you're fascinated!) snapshots of life and moments. and the complexities and details of our lives will read, in retrospect, so much clearer than any other materials of the past or present. just as the clarity with which we see things has improved with the emergence of digital imaging and hi-res photography, our understanding of the past will be significantly clearer because of the details we are writing now. we are constantly writing and re-writing our own autobiographies, from the moment we self-publish.

and isn't that such a beautiful thing?

-stephan!e

(written sunday, 3.22.09, 9pm PST)

bag lunch

one aspect of my daily routine that i despise, and perhaps more than i really should, is packing my lunch.


i don't know how eating became such a taxing and boring task. make the sandwich. bag the carrots. wash the apple. pack a snack. pour water into thermos. repeat.

one thing i'm looking forward to about cohabitation with my love next year is the possibility and potential of breathing excitement into currently mundane tasks. lunchtime could be an activity, rather than a chore: making each other lunches, writing notes to slip in with the carrots, swapping apples for dragonfruit.

i imagine a dozen different domestic situations that i want to change next year and i am so, so ready.

23

i once had a friend ask me, "how does it feel to have yr birthday right after christmas? does it bother you that Jesus always takes the cake?"

my response?

"meh. i don't really like cake that much anyway."


but, it is nice to be reminded by those around you how much you mean to them. the trouble with having a birthday so close to Christmas is that any feeling of happiness or celebration gets sucked up and confounded by the residual effects and aftermath of christmas. instead of being happy with all the ppl i love, there's all this bitterness and tiredness from all the merry-making that precedes it.

like having eaten too much chocolate cake at once, so the next thing you want to reach for better be salty and something crunchy.


an aside: i am especially grateful to my best friends Chelsea and Ben this year. they've really been the best gifts of all and sometimes i hardly feel like i deserve them. i love you both, so much.

great things come in small packages

i just got a funny package from my parents. they sent me a pile of things i'd left in my room which they'd misinterpreted as crucial to my life here in the limited part of LA proper where i am currently residing.

and it's a good mix of things: some Situationism books, some shoes, fabric softener (but no detergent), a first-aid kit, and some recycling (must've forgotten to take it out before i left. oops.)

it seems my parents, in their wisdom, inadvertently sent me an important reminder: that i need to continue educating myself and learning and not forget my critical perspective, that my feet deserve to be kept safe and warm, that i should keep the things around me soft and fragrant (tho not necessarily clean...), that i should always disinfect my wounds, and that no job should go unfinished (i'm taking the recycling out tomorrow).

this is good life advice. heed!
-stephanie