maxine hong kingston

Last week was the CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF DOE LIBRARY!!! Free cupcakes (they were dry, you didn't miss out) and free books (selection was unimpressive) and Cal alum Maxine Hong Kingston spoke along with her husband. They are very cute together.

Now, to be honest...I've never read any of her books. I think I've read a snippet of Woman Warrior...maybe? In any case, I guess that'll go onto my list of books to read (one of which includes a book about how Introverts can tap into their secret introvert powers, as recommended by my soon-to-be therapist friend Candice). Anyway, the intrigue of Maxine Hong Kingston is that she is a) a Chinese American woman who is a writer (I don't know if she's good or not, but she's on AP English reading lists so there must be some sort of literary merit in them), b) in a mixed race marriage and c) really cute. Maybe one day I'll be all of the above! Really, though, Ethnic Identity has been on the mind lately. Part of my development as a self-actualized being, you know? I'm always looking to improve myself.

Anyway. She signed my journal, I was flushed with pleasure and a little abashed and that was that. Also, I wish people would care more about  things like THE LIBRARY (and history), ethnic identity, and other really important matters.

home

I spent a really good night out with these three. Funny how growing up with someone or someones can you make downright complacent with keeping up a friendship. Estrangement happens with the ones you're most familiar with, no? (Actually, I'm not really sure, but that sounded appropriately profound). Quite frankly, keeping up with each other isn't something we do. I guess knowing each others' ins and outs over the years makes you think you have leeway to take them for granted a bit (hope that's not what my marriage turns out to be).

Last night was weirdly liberating. We had dinner and dessert and drove around LA--felt like high school all over again, and I actually mean that in a good way. As if we weren't all graduating college in a month or two, as if Mich didn't just have her pharm school interview that afternoon, as if we hadn't grown up. And Mich went ape on everyone when she was giving directions ("YO, GIRL. 110 NORTH.") and I even said "hecka" for the first time in my life.

But I guess we've already been through a lot with each other.

camellia

For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of--to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus she felt herself, and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless.
--To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Last night my roommate and her boyfriend walked in on me while I was puttering around the apartment in a shapeless sweater and wearing no pants at all. I was singing too. Today I took the day for myself, and it was a minor failure, for various reasons. The long and short of it was that at the end of the day I didn't feel well-rested and my run-ins with people made me feel sort of...wilted afterwards. Fact is, I just want some time and space--space--for myself. To perhaps feel and actually be myself. I think I'm half-gasping for air of my own, unpolluted by any other human presence. And I had that today--if only for fifteen glorious minutes when I stood by myself on the sidewalk, contemplating this camellia tree. Layer upon layer of fragile petals, but when you're holding it in your hand, the bud feels strangely resilient. I actually don't have a huge penchant for flowers--too fleeting, too transient. That's why I prefer succulents. But I do love camellias, dahlias, peonies, and flowers with a multiplicity of petals--makes its transience all the more beautiful.

I'm having a hard time accepting transience. Berkeley has been solid these four years. The friends I've made have seemed solid. But I'm beginning to feel like a puff of cloud or wisp of smoke, easily blown hither and thither. Just a wedge-shaped core of darkness, unseen. Feeling that state of being is equal parts liberating, knowing I can so easily be borne away on a wind of possibilities, and isolating, knowing I can also simply be removed and set adrift down no particular course.

little accomplishments

My external battery charger broke the other day. See that glinting metal thing? There should be another one--but that one went MIA and thus my batteries were not charging. I was irked--I crawled around the floor of my bedroom to see if it fell off and skittered off somewhere obscure, but all I came up with was a lot of my own hair (from my head, not elsewhere!!!).

So I thought, okay, I need this phone charger to work NOW, I'll come up with some makeshift metal prong-thing to stick there. I tried using a staple (I know, I'm so dumb) but it just disappeared into the hole left by the actual missing prong. Alright. So off I went stumping to get the apartment hardware kit. I unscrewed the charger and pried it open, but it wouldn't stay open so I had to hold it open while it clamped to my poor little fingers. That's when I notice the metal prong-thing wasn't missing--it somehow just loosened and slipped and was hiding in the black hole that was the inside of the charger.

What little engineering cogs I have inherited from my father started whirling and spinning around. I would have to re-affix the prong, which--given the fact that the charger would only open up half a centimeter--might be a little difficult. Good thing I have nimble hands. I found my little Xacto knife, my eyebrow tweezers, and my nice stationary tape (I didn't want to get up from my chair to walk two feet over to my roommate's desk for normal Scotch tape) and after some prying and tongue-biting--voila! The metal prong was back in place and my spare battery was happily charging away.



Okay, so maybe no one really cares about this except for me, but I don't care. I just felt so proud and accomplished. I like fixing things. If you really want to know, in sixth grade people would call me Dr. Denise because I'd fix stuff--lead pencils, pens that weren't working...and...well. I guess that was it. But okay, I actually was really good at it. Anyway, I was--and still am--very pleased with myself and my handiwork. Like a real, jack-of-all-trades sort of woman or something of the sort.

Let me know if you want me to fix anything--hole in your jeans around the butt area, lead pencil stuck with lead, bruised spirit...I am happy to help!

shalom

I spent an afternoon at the Marina the other day (not this week, obviously--it's been gloriously rainy). A man named Royal (I think?) walked over to the bench where I was sitting and asked if he could sit next to a "pretty girl." Wasn't sure who he was talking about, but I scootched over to make some room for him anyway. He advised me to read The Art of the Novel. Said it'd change my life. I wonder if he was some angel and if I really should read it. Maybe it'll help me write the Next Great Work of Literature. 

I don't know much about the particulars about my future but I'm still content. As my eyes tracked the patterns of clouds being blown about the sky and I squinted against the pricks of light scattering themselves on the water to gaze at the city across the bay, I just...let myself be. A friend told me the other day that I'm "thriving." And I thought, yes, yes I am thriving. I put together support letters for Kenya that I'm highly pleased with, made a delicious rosemary chicken the other day, am making new friends in French class, and ate a salad for lunch.

Really, though--it's my favorite time of year here. Springtime in Berkeley, when the days get longer and I can roam and linger about the streets, and get ice cream and no one will think it strange because it won't be pouring rain outside. It feels good to be me.

i am not yours, sara teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

But oh, I am indeed found in You. 

i am going back

And that fills me with inexplicable joy.

i will never be the same

I tasted my first blood orange ever today. Years of gnawing on ox tail, feasting on cow tongue, swallowing bird spit my mother said was good for me...and I have never had a simple blood orange.

I bought a single--single!--one from Berkeley Bowl (purveyor of the most superlative fruits and vegetables--the carrotiest carrots, the appleyest apples, the bloodiest of blood oranges) and stuffed a sliver into my mouth. It was unbelievably, unfathomably good. It is now nestled in the upper echelons of my favorite fruits, among white nectarines, blueberries, and Ambrosia apples.

Myron, if you are reading this and would like to do me a favor, you can buy me a bag of these. Pounds and pounds. You don't have to get me honey roasted almonds anymore, which you complain are too expensive at $5.99/lb (but you are more than welcome to if you so desire). Just make sure you're getting the smallish blood oranges (two and a half inches in diameter?) that are $1.29/lb. Thanks. (This invitation to make me happy is open to all, by the way).