While Some Were Born Heroes

2011-02-26T17:28:00.000-08:00

Dreaming

2010-12-20T05:51:00.000-08:00

In the moments just after waking, it feels inexplicably pressing to remember every detail of your nightly visions. That the world you are trying to recall had, only a few minutes ago, been inseparable from reality, makes uncoiling dream life and waking life essential. Did you really run your toothbrush along the inside of a toilet bowl? Are all your teeth still in place? Are you at the bottom of a cliff? Did your sister really promise you five hundred dollars if you could touch your elbow to your tongue, and can you really touch your elbow to your tongue? The sense of urgency dwindles as one moves further and further into wakefulness and grogginess is overtaken by the aroma of scrambled eggs or the nudge of unfinished work, but even then, you are left uneasy. It is as though you are dimly aware of the fact that what your dreams consist of is not merely the stuff of fantasy, but something from the periphery of another life, lingering on after it has penetrated the guise of one that you are in.

My Little Sister

2010-12-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Ms. Yang

It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Committee on Admissions has voted to accept your application for admission to Georgetown University. I am happy to offer you a place in the first-year class for the fall of 2011.

You are to be congratulated on the distinction of being accepted under the Early Action program. Admission was especially competitive as offers were extended only to those candidates whose extraordinary academic and personal accomplishments ensured they would be admitted regardless of the strength of the remaining applicant pool. This year, the Committee on Admissions considered over 6,600 applications, but limited the number of acceptances to approximately 17% of those who applied.

Georgetown does not require Early Action candidates to confirm their enrollment immediately. You must observe the Candidates' Reply Date of May 1, a common deadline for all applicants, but I do hope that we will hear from you as soon as your decision is certain. When you have reached your decision, please return the enclosed enrollment agreement form together with the required non-refundable deposit to confirm your place. Please read carefully the enclosed details for more information regarding your enrollment. I also encourage you to visit the accepted student website for the most current updates about campus activities.

I am pleased to speak on behalf of the entire Georgetown community in extending to you this offer of admission. I look forward to welcoming you to the University as a member of the Class of 2015.

Sincerely,

Charles A. Deacon
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions

(December 14, 2010)

Doughnut Garden

2010-12-15T08:34:00.000-08:00

Cheerios. They look like tiny donuts to stupid people. (Urban Dictionary)
"What’s wrong with you?” the little girl asked when she saw what I had done. She hadn’t really meant it as a question, and because I wasn’t too sure myself, I didn’t answer. There’s nothing like looking stupid in front of a kid, so I patted her head in a vague, grownup sort of way and assured her it was for her own good. This was before the police cruiser in my driveway drove off, before she stopped wailing long enough for her parents to take her home. “What did you do to her?” the other neighbors kept asking, wondering what kind of person could make a five year old cry like that, but I told them that it had only been an accident. That I had not seen Taylor playing in the field earlier that day. That I had merely been gathering some goldenrods when I accidentally uprooted her garden. As I recited these lies, I picked at the dirt that had collected under my nails and tried to remember that I had saved her.

Perhaps one of the reasons the Bloxbys were so certain I was guilty of some unspeakable crime was that they had just moved to Marlott Drive three weeks ago. I’ve lived on this street for thirty-four years—my mother sold the old house on Blake Street after dad left—so most people here know me. But to the Bloxbys, I was a stranger with mismatched slippers and the intensity of one too accustomed to watching, who lived by herself in a four-bedroom house and, for all they knew, most likely spied on unsuspecting neighbors from behind one-way windows.

Every afternoon after school, before her father called her in for dinner, Taylor entered the goldenrod field.

The houses on Marlott Drive all face a field of goldenrods that stretches from one end of the street to the other. A goldenrod on its own is pretty unremarkable, but take a couple thousand and spread them until they are all the eye can see, and the scene is breathtaking.

The goldenrods that grow in one corner of the field are different from the others. Their stems are not thin and straight, but swollen at the nape with perfectly spherical growths, bowed as though pregnant. Once, I cut one of the swellings open on my kitchen floor. Beneath the layers of crusty, fibrous shell, I discovered a tiny maggot, a baby goldenrod gall fly, nestled within the silky white lining of the stem.

And though I know the maggot eats the plant from inside and eventually emerges with the plant's death, I sometimes like to think that the maggot is not gnawing away, but merely dreaming, safely unborn in its womb.

I’ve studied goldenrod gall flies for twenty years, so it’s stupid of me to think this way. Then again, there is always a tension between knowing and dreaming—the way things are, and the way things could be. It's like being in one of those spinning cups in Disneyland--as long as you keep spinning, all the world's a blur, and for all you know, the things you want to see really could be there. But once the cup stops spinning, everything comes into painful focus. If being stupid means twirling in the cup a little longer, if being stupid means not having to face the gap between knowing and dreaming, then I don’t mind.

Such thoughts did not immediately occur to me when I stumbled upon Taylor Bloxby that afternoon. I had been my way to take notes on the flies, which were beginning to emerge with the end of summer, when I caught sight of a small figure in one corner, the tall stems bowed over her like a green womb edged with yellow. She wore a plain blue Wendy dress already soiled at the knees, her dark hair had begun falling out of its ponytail, and she was digging with a intensity that indicated she was not there for play, but had been charged with some sort of mission that needed to be executed with the deliberation of an architect planning the hanging gardens of Babylon. Was it coincidence that she had chosen the spot where the goldenrods bowed? As she dug, she kept her other hand closed tightly over something. She abruptly stopped and looked up, my presence having disrupted her sacred work.

“What are those?” I asked.

"Seeds," she said.

A handful of Cheerios in a Ziploc bag.

Before it occurred to me to rescue her, I envied her.

The week before dad left the house for good, a rumor began circulating among the kids in the neighborhood about Donny Hamelin, a kid who had lived in the second to last house on our street and had once grown a doughnut tree in his backyard. The tree had sprung from a couple of Honey Nut Cheerios, and bore glazed doughnuts with sprinkles until his parents cut it down. Though I had already bought some cabbage seeds for my science project, I decided that there were already enough vegetables in the world, and so the week before dad left, I planted doughnut seeds in my mother’s vegetable garden. While there was no way of knowing whether the doughnuts that grew from plain Cheerios would have sprinkles, I hoped that at the very least, they would be glazed. I did not think to ask anyone. By that time, dad had stopped coming home every night, and my mother had stopped getting up in the mornings. As my mother slept, I dropped golden O's into the dark, crumbly earth, occasionally licking the sweetness from my fingers. The thought of a doughnut garden kept other thoughts at bay, and I told myself that if the doughnuts grew, there was still a chance.

I told myself there was still a chance when they forgot I was there and started screaming things. Close the door, my dad would say when he noticed me. Close the door.

When we got home from Grandma's that Saturday, his car was gone. The cabinet in the master bedroom no longer held his crumpled handkerchiefs and gray-white socks. The photograph of me in my sun hat at the local farmer's market had vanished from the telephone stand, and his favorite armchair no longer sagged against the living room wall. My mother had despised that chair because it clashed with everything else in the house, and he had loved it precisely for that reason. When I saw that the armchair was gone, I went out into the backyard and tore up the garden with a shovel. I moved systematically from row to row, crushing gourds and cabbages as my mother watched from the kitchen window.

But when I saw the Cheerios that lay exposed in the overturned earth, I sensed there was more at stake. I lay down the shovel and began picking my crop out of the carnage, searching from one end of the garden to the other six or seven times, crawling through vegetable innards and casting aside fistfuls of dirt until the smell of death and fertilizer clung to my fingers, until I had retrieved every single one. I cradled the still dormant doughnut seeds in my hand and breathed on them the way I breathed on dead batteries, willing them to work.

The screen door creaked. I felt my mother kneel beside me. "These won't grow, honey," she whispered, closing her hands around mine, and I cried then, as we rocked back and forth in the cabbage leaves, for the things that could not be grown, and for the things that could not be saved.

She would never know that her garden had been doomed from the start, because I destroyed it for her.

There was no need to continue flinging dirt after Taylor had discovered me, but it was hard to stop. There was something perversely satisfying about tearing up that garden, something empowering about saving someone, even against their own will, and I didn’t stop clawing at the earth until she began to shriek and her parents came running, yelling “We’ve called the police! We’ve called the police!” I was saving her, I wanted to tell them. It was then that I realized that the world I was trying to protect was one I was intruding on, and the thought that I no longer belonged bothered me. But there was nothing I could do. I had done for her what no one had done for me, and yet it was funny to realize that I had been as helpless as her all along.

A few days ago, on a whim, I looked up doughnut seeds online. I didn’t find much: an entry on Urban Dictionary and an ad. Some guy was trying to sell tiny packets of Cheerios, two dollars per pack. I ordered a couple of packets, but I don’t intend to start another garden. Instead, I keep the seeds on my shelf, beside two halves of a goldenrod gall. At times, I find myself wondering how his business is going, and wishing him well—hope doesn’t sell nowadays.

Long after the police cruiser in my driveway had driven off, after she had stopped wailing long enough for her parents to bundle her up and bring her home, after the pace of life had resumed and there was no time for regret, I finished collecting all the Cheerios that had been scattered throughout the field. I imagined as I knelt beneath the goldenrods, alone in a green womb, dreaming flies suspended overhead, that I had saved her. I imagined that her hands cradled the seeds, and that my hands were closed around hers, and I imagined rocking her back and forth amidst the ruins of our garden.

"What's wrong with you?"

I say the only answer I can think of. Not so much an answer, I suppose, as a prayer.

"You’ll never have to know."

Doughnut Garden

2010-12-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

Exercise: Describe someone watching someone else doing something he/she should not be doing. At some point, write, "But what I've always wondered is," and continue with the action.

The goldenrods that grow at the edge of the soccer field are not like the ones in A Guide to Naming Herbs. Their stems are not thin and straight, but are swollen at the nape with spherical bulbs, and the plants arch their backs as pregnant women do. Here is the poetry: within each bulbous swelling, or gall, nestles the beginning of a goldenrod gall fly. And though the fly eats its host from inside and eventually emerges with the plant's death, I like to think that the maggot is not gnawing away during its months of seclusion, but merely dreaming in suspension, safely unborn in its womb.

I was heading down the path to these goldenrods when I saw this little girl of about five or six hunched beneath them, the tall stems bowed over her protectively like a domed womb. Her disheveled appearance, to be expected when children her age are permitted to play outdoors, did not suit her. Rather, stick in hand, she shoveled with a intentness that indicated she was not there for child's play, but had been charged with some sort of mission that needed to be executed with the deliberation of an architect planning the hanging gardens of Babylon. The intensity of her concentration fascinated me, and when I peered through birdwatching binoculars to observe her, she paused and looked up, as though my presence had somehow disrupted her sacred work.

She tossed the twig aside and rummaged through her backpack, rummaged until she gave up and turned it upside down, the contents spilling out beneath the green roof. A tattered folder, a spelling book and a sweater too heavy for late summer, and then she had it--a handful of Cheerios in a Ziploc bag. She crouched over the garden bed she had fashioned and sowed her crop, patting soil over each golden-colored O with surprising gentleness for one who had just been tilling the earth with such ferocity. As she wiped her hands on the back of her I could feel the thrill of dirt beneath my nails.

The week before dad left, I planted Fruit Loops in my mother's squash garden. Two months of summer vacation had exhausted my usual pastimes, and after flipping through one of the gardening magazines in the bathroom while on the search for something to color, I decided to turn to gardening. It occurred to me that if cabbage seeds could sprout into cabbages, why couldn't the Fruit Loops I ate on the mornings mother didn't feel like getting up (and dad had not come home yet) become doughnuts? While my mother slept, I poked holes in the dark, crumbly earth, dropping multicolored O's into the shallow indentations as I went, occasionally licking the sweetness from my fingers.

When my mom and I got home from Grandma's that Saturday, his car was gone. The cabinet in the master bedroom no longer held his crumpled handkerchiefs and gray-white socks. The photograph of me in my Sunday best at the local farmer's market had vanished from the telephone stand, and his favorite armchair no longer sagged against the living room wall. Once I realized the armchair was gone, the one my mother had despised because it clashed with everything else in the house, the one he loved precisely for that reason, I went out into backyard and tore up the garden with a shovel. I moved systematically from row to row, Demeter in her wrath, crushing gourds and cabbages as my mother watched from the kitchen window.

But when I saw the Fruit Loops that lay exposed in the overturned earth, I lay down the shovel and began picking my crop out of the carnage. I searched from one end of the garden to the other six or seven times, crawling through vegetable innards and casting aside fistfuls of dirt until the smell of death and fertilizer clung to my fingers, until I had retrieved every single one. I cupped the still dormant doughnut seeds in my hand and rattled and breathed on them the way I rattled and breathed on dead batteries when I willed them to work.

The screen door creaked. I felt my mother kneel beside me. "These won't grow, honey," she whispered, closing her hands around mine, and I cried then, as we rocked back and forth in the cabbage leaves, the casualty of our ruined garden around us. I knew then that some things could not be planted, and others could not be saved.

So I could imagine what those Cheerios were. Gold coins to be discovered on a later treasure hunt. Gifts of friendship for the gnomes living underground. Seeds for a doughnut garden. I once sowed my own crop, and am content to leave the meaning of those mounds to her.

But what I have always wondered since that day is why she chose the goldenrods for her shelter. Why she chose to deposit her treasure so far from her mom's vegetable garden, so obscured from the rest of the world; why she planted her garden in secret. What did she already know? What had been said, what inauspicious warnings of "That's not the way doughnuts are made, dear" had been given to make her sense that this was the only way, kneeling alone in a green womb, dreaming flies suspended overhead? Perhaps she needed solitude as much as I did, needed to be nestled away from the oppressiveness of knowing, secure in the sweetness of a world where doughnuts are not made but grown, with apple juice and a handful of Cheerios in a Ziploc bag.

Unplugged

2010-09-30T02:06:00.000-07:00

None of the plugs seem to fit today

The toaster's gone rogue; my world's gone gray

For none of the lamps seem to want to plug in

and I can't watch Spongebob shenanigans

The flat screen TV won't run on sun rays,

My phone can't charge--no texts to save

Disconnect to find (how strange)
that being plugged in is much the same

To tell you the truth, I'd rather sleep in
the next time the world comes unplugged.

The third installment

2010-09-10T05:08:00.000-07:00

An automated voice chirped "Thank you for starting your day with Start Mart" as he crept through the sliding door, knocking over the stack of bright green shopping baskets that stood beside the entrance. Five minutes late. But maybe Marge had not taken roll yet. Maybe he was still in time for the Sample Wars announcement.

Every work place has certain traditions, intended to inject vitality and ambition into an environment where the day often falls into plodding routine. These traditions usually involve competitions, tournaments that, like marathons or jousts, allow individuals to compare skill and showcase impressive talents. But while most contests are held in good humor, with an understanding that the entire thing is not meant to be taken too seriously, the weekly Sample Wars at Start Mart often escalated into something much more desperate. In a realm where work mainly consisted of unpacking oranges, sweeping aisles of canned goods and arranging packages on hooks, there were few such chances for anyone to satisfy their need to conquer, to prove their own superiority.

Contrary to its name, the Sample Wars depended a great deal more on your luck in the food draw than on any pea flicking abilities. As long as the slip you drew from the tray was a popular item, as long as enough people decided to purchase, for example, frozen chicken wings after visiting your sample stand, you would be crowned King or Queen for a day. But whereas victory was sometimes easily attainable, failure was at times just as certain. Once assigned something like lima bean dip or brussel sprouts, you understood from the beginning that it was a lost cause.The rest of the afternoon would be spent watching hordes of people gathering in front of other stands, emptying the sample trays the moment the potato wedges came out of the microwave and carting away shopping carts filled with frozen pizzas.

It sounded comical, but these contests came to mean more than frozen foods or being crowned SMart King or Queen. They came to symbolize agency, the power to influence some course of action, if not his own, and his inability to sell lima bean dip seemed to him to summarize everything that was defective in him.

While Marge Lionel did feel it was necessary to enforce her authority as Head Manager, she did not take particular pleasure in reprimanding her staff or humiliating latecomers. But as is often the case when it comes to human interaction, her treatment of Boggs that morning was driven by a series of circumstances that were not all directly related. She had run out of eggs and toast and so ate nothing but crackers for breakfast. After taking the elevator down to the basement she had remembered that her sister had borrowed her car for the day, and in the time it took her to remember this, she missed the bus. As shipment of bottled water was missing. There was a leak in the bathroom downstairs.

Then there was the fact that it had been Boggs again.

His repeated tardiness despite threats of earlier shifts and extra hours confirmed what she already knew: that he would not continue to be late despite her warnings, and that there were other factors in his life that wielded more influence than she did ever could. These reminders of the one-sided nature of her feelings hurt her, and though she suspected that most at Start Mart held little respect for her, his continued disregard struck her as betrayal. That he could not see how she protected him, how she hid his tardiness from the owner though twelve late slips far exceeded the limit, how she had had a crush on him since his arrival at the supermarket two years ago seemed to her a sort of rejection.

Nevertheless, for all her insults and threats, Marge had never planned to turn him in. But the late slips were adding up, and she could not protect him for much longer.

I love sushi.

2010-09-05T10:29:00.001-07:00

Like a race track, a movie theater, or the lottery, a sushi bar is a place of possibility. The unpredictability of the sushi conveyor belt, the impossibility of knowing what will pass your seat next, seem to promise even the most unlikely. At any moment, you could aim for a dish of sashimi but grab a pair of arctic clam sushis by mistake, and find that you like them much more. A particularly flustered waiter could bring you a hand roll you never ordered and end up catching your fancy.You could discover that the mayonnaise-laced prawns look quite revolting up close and be caught in the act of sneaking them back onto the conveyor belt. While ordering you could be told that the restaurant had run out of salmon, only to watch several plates of it parade past your table just as you are about to leave.

In truth, there was much we did not forsee that Friday, even before we began ordering sushis and sashimi. I did not expect to find Ann wearing mismatched slippers as she proudly showed me her spotless living room. Karen did not expect to walk up several flights of stairs before realizing that she could not find the right door because she was in the wrong building. And who would have thought that as several batches of cranberry oatmeal cookies shriveled in the oven, we would be too distracted by Scrabble troubles to notice?

When spending time with family and friends, you often come to expect the ordinary. Because these are the people you love most, they are also the people you often find most predictable. Daddy will always do something absentminded, like wear a bib out of the dentist's office or try to force his way into a restaurant that has already closed. Mommy and Emily will never agree on which clothes are fit to wear, but will always manage to reach some sort of compromise. Ann, Karen, and Christine will never mention rabbits without adding some sort of derogatory comment involving "unwashed" and "disgusting."

The patterns you observe become, in your mind, established facts, and you become grow certain that things could never happen any other way. You learn to anticipate their reactions and take precautions. (ex: Baby Rabbit should mentioned minimally in conversation.) And yet, somehow, even when all patterns have seemingly been noted and mapped out, the unexpected happens. Mommy and Emily actually decide on a dress for Emily's junior prom together. Daddy sits through a doctor's appointment with me without once asking me a question about personal hygiene or the last time I washed my hair. My friends overcome their phobia of rabbits and kidnap mine, only to return her to me, several hours of frantic questioning later, in a sealed sandwich bag.

One of the things that surprised me most this Friday was the discovery that there are people who care what I write in my blog. Who leave comments so I can experience the thrill of getting feedback. Who read my posts and remember enough to discuss them over miso soup and sushi, if only to debate whether my latest story is about a cockroach, or if watermelon really can be eaten from the bottom up.

The second installment

2010-09-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

Like cleaning windows for a living or eating fettuccine with a spoon, being a full-time coward was no easy feat. He could no longer remember when he first realized that was what he was, but the signs had always been there, and he had been bound to catch on eventually. Who but a coward could not admit to his mother that he had been the one who unearthed her potatoes fifteen years ago to make potato stamps for his print collection? (She still suspected the postman.) And who but a coward would pretend not to notice when Mrs. Boggs from Building C dropped her quarters into the last washing machine, even though he had gotten there first?

Unearthed potatoes and washing machines aside, he believed he handled it well. As well as any disability, and the frustration and isolation that came with it, could be handled. In his mind, his cowardice was a disability because, much like a missing toe or hearing impediment, it made life unfairly difficult. There were too many things to avoid, too many people to hide from, too many reasons to stay crouched behind his umbrella stand.While others took buses to new towns and auditioned for parts in plays, he could not even bring himself to try buy a new brand of deodorant. He went through each day at the supermarket surrounded by reminders of his uselessness and yet constantly gave himself new reasons to despise himself, collecting vague insecurities like a lint roller until had no stickiness left and could only retreat to books of valiant knights, desperate to avoid further contact with a world that had become too much.

Pathetic. Breakfast was not even over yet, and already he had begun to feel sorry for himself. Shifting his arm to cram the last of his cucumber sandwich into his mouth, he glanced at his watch. 7:14. Eleven minutes before everyone who worked at Sam's Market gathered behind the gardening section, before Brenda began roll call and announce the Sample of the Week. Sixteen minutes before he was marked for his 55th late slip. It took about ten minutes to bike from the apartment to the supermarket-if Ms. Kendricks left No. 201 in the next six minutes, he could beat the elevator downstairs and still have a chance.

Or he could just tell her about the slippers.

It occurred to him that Ms. Kendricks might not even care. Perhaps she had not even noticed. They might laugh at his mistake, make a few jokes about his carelessness, and then chat for a while about the comforts of casual footwear. All would be well then, and he would be able eat breakfast at his dining table again, blissfully unaware of whether his neighbors had left their houses yet.

But still he remained in the dirt and bread crumbs, stooped between the wall and shoe cabinet.

Thank you = Wingardium Leviosa

2010-08-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

While there is little in common between a Shakespearean drama and a supermarket (then again, writing is often about connecting what should not be connected), both manage to capture a vibrant and intriguing cross-section of the human race. Clownish employees, teenage drama queens, a secret colony of little people who know more than they let on-apparently people of all sorts need groceries, and it is amusing to watch those who join parade.

There are also people who are not endearingly eccentric or quintessential, but merely unbearable. People who shove, snatch, cut lines for food samples, and are inexplicably rude. And though I am bound to encounter at least one such specimen between getting more toilet paper and trying to find cucumbers still wrapped in bubble wrap, I am always taken by surprise when I do.

I would like to think that what bothered me later as I sifted through the selection of TV dinners was a bout of righteous anger, but there is little to justify such wrath. The man did not wrestle away a bottle of shampoo I was sniffing, insult me for speaking English loudly with my sister, or even ram his shopping cart into the box of bottled water on purpose. He did nothing but maneuver his shopping cart around me as I shuffled over to help him right the box, did nothing but fail to utter two, monosyllabic words of gratitude. And it was this omission that haunted me. His failure to say thank you plagued me so deeply that I continued to rant to Emily for the next forty minutes as we tried to lay out such discourtesy in logical terms. Did he think I was the cleaning lady? Had he been distracted by the new loofahs on display? Was he mute-perhaps his tongue been cut out by pirates? And because I often relish over-analyzing my own actions when others do not act as I expect them to, I then tried to remember if I had grimaced or drooled, if my nose had been dripping or my neckline too low.

It is easy to overlook the little courtesies. Words like "excuse me" and "thank you" have little practical value, and there is no doubt that I am perfectly capable of getting that bag of flour for you whether or not you begin your request with a "could you" or "please." And yet, these words have become part of a ritual that is repeated hundreds of times each day because they serve to assure those around us that nothing is amiss. That the world that they know is still in place, and that the flimsy decrees governing human interaction still stand. Excuse me, I just need to get through to the stairs, don't worry, I am not being chased by a hungry mob of pirates that may trample you all in the next few minutes, or cut out your tongues. Bless you, I am sure your sneeze is just a cold and not some incurable fungal infection that will eventually spread to your liver. Thank you, the box of bottled water has been efficiently rearranged, and we can now go on with our lives. Everything is as it should be.

Of course, it would be melodramatic and absurd to say that I am now unable to go on with my life. And perhaps someone less prone to unnecessary analysis would have simply forgotten the encounter the second it ended. But the exchange that failed to take place in that bottled water aisle today wasted an evening of my life, and that, boys and girls, is why "please and thank you are called the magic words."

The first installment

2010-08-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Had it not been the slippers, it almost certainly would have been something else.

Even now, as he squatted behind the wooden elephant umbrella stand and candy wrappers that had somehow gathered inside his front door, he smiled at the way things had turned out. Smiled to himself as though this routine of lurking behind the umbrella stand, listening for the footsteps that would leave No. 201 so that he could finally begin his own day, was merely a game he happened to be playing. As though the 54 tardies he had collected since the first Tuesday of March and the discomfort of eating breakfast wedged between a shoe cabinet and the wall were things to be dismissed, even laughed at. As though he were kneeling in dirt and bread crumbs simply because he wanted to.

In truth, he had been driven to this particular spot behind the umbrella stand by a series of incontrovertible truths. He could not arrive at the supermarket before eight because he could not leave the house until he had heard Mrs. Kendricks, who lived in No. 201, step out into the hallway, water her pea plants, jingle her keys, and lock her door. He could not leave the house until he heard these sounds because he could not chance an encounter with Mrs. Kendricks. And he could not chance an encounter because he could not bring himself to tell her about the slippers. It was all as logical and as inevitable as the progression of a chemical reaction, and he had no choice but to look on.

Eating watermelon

2010-08-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

When eating a slice of watermelon, it is necessary to start from the bottom and work your way up, even if this means gnawing though several inches of tough, tasteless rind. This way, when the white flesh and stringy fibers have been digested, there will be left a single tip of perfectly orchestrated sweetness. The pinnacle of your watermelon experience. With this, all the sour bits, the disappointing bits lose meaning, and you can no longer remember when things were not so sweet, or you were not this content.

To think what life would be if this phenomenon could apply to all things. A difficult semester, a new job, a rocky romance. What if all the best parts, the worthwhile bits, were saved for the end? What if you could wallow into the mire with the conviction that it was only going to get better from there? Not only do you get your custom-made happy ending, but it becomes something you have earned, something not merely bestowed or stumbled upon by chance, but planned for and now savored.

If only life could be eaten like a watermelon slice.

2010-08-22T04:54:00.000-07:00

Father to daughter

2010-08-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

When my dad doesn't know what to say to me, he asks about the last time I washed my hair. These episodes tend to occur while we are in an elevator or a waiting area, and are often witnessed by uncomfortable bystanders. While ignoring him convinces him that the inquiry must be repeated so that those in the shop next door can hear as well, answering my dad only leads to questions more cringeworthy and specific. What do you mean "recently"? Wednesday or Thursday? Did you use the dandruff shampoo last time? Did you scrub clockwise? Did you rinse twice? Maybe you should wash your hair again tonight. Ten years of communication have accomplished little: my dad has yet to learn that the other people waiting for their dentist appointments should not be subject to the details of my shampooing regimen, and I have yet to discover a way to deflect these questions without losing it.

What infuriates me is not so much my dad's tactlessness or his inability to keep his volume down in public, but rather his persistence in asking the questions I don't want to answer. He seems to relish latching onto subjects I have labelled either taboo or pointless, subjects such as my personal hygiene, and pestering me to discuss them. I do not know what he is trying to find in my answers-knowing when I last rinsed my hair hardly offers a glimpse into matters of the heart. It is of great importance whether I ate toast or porridge for breakfast, but arguments I've had with friends, doubts I've had throughout the day, insecurities I've acquired usually go unmentioned. Of course, by the time it occurs to my dad to ask me about such things, I am probably already fuming about having to repeat the lunch menu for a third time. It is as though, in groping through the dark, we always miss each other.

Yet, for two people who must resort to arguing about how often hair should be washed, we also share a strange collection of habits and mutual understandings. Like my dad, I ask lots of questions during TV shows, spend most of my time satiating a relentless sweet tooth, and have a soft spot for rabbits in green pajamas. We both tend to leave sweaty socks behind the bathroom door, cough in a way that infuriates my mom, and care entirely too much about the way others see us. My dad is a stickler for rules regarding anything from traffic to recycling, and though I hold romantic notions about being a rebel, breaking the rules usually leaves me feeling nauseous.There is an understanding that if I let my dad buy a 珍珠奶茶 on the way home, he'll buy me one too, and that if I cook anything, even charred carrot bits, he must praise it.
Though I sometimes forget it, I am my father's daughter, and this somehow makes the searching worthwhile.

caca by mayelle

2010-08-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

The art of surprising yourself

2010-08-07T01:07:00.000-07:00

There is no surprise like one you leave for yourself. Perhaps it is the chicken salad sandwich you left in your purse several days ago because you decided to eat a granola bar instead, the sweaty socks you crammed into the recesses of your backpack after basketball practice last Tuesday, the roll of dollar bills you accidentally left in the medicine cabinet the last time you were looking for band-aids.

Why wait for others to leave you surprises when you can take care of it yourself? Save a slice of cake and hide it behind the leftovers in your refrigerator. Stow a couple of quarters into a bag you've forgotten you had. By the time you rummage through the leftovers from last week, or unearth that bag again during spring cleaning, that cake, those quarters will have become gifts, far exceeding their original value. The delight and self-congratulation that comes with these discoveries, the certainty that there are more blessings to stumble across and the freshness of suddenly looking forward to the day ahead. You are charmed, all because you thought to keep a few coins buried away.

Then again, there are surprises you probably don't want to leave for yourself. Overdue phone bills, smelly laundry, fingernail clippings, unrefrigerated ice cream, expired gift cards. The homework assignment you accidentally left between the pages of your biology textbook and did not find until the morning it was due. The coupon for free yogurt you finally collected enough stamps on but never got around to using until it was too late. These surprises spring out from nowhere and pound away at your optimism and measure of self-worth. At these moments, you lament the loss of free yogurt and the curse of your own forgetfulness.

Until you find the surprise you left for yourself in the medicine cabinet, and the world is right once more.

Half-eaten

2010-08-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

Half-eaten snacks are the usual fare around here-at least when I attempt to bring home anything remotely edible. An bag of chips already opened, a sandwich with most of the ham and cheese missing.To most, receiving a half-eaten sandwich would be anything but a sign of affection, but Emily has come to speak this language of "leftovers." She knows when I say, "I brought a something for you" and uncover a slightly flattened doughnut with teethmarks in it, I mean "I thought of you today while sitting in Mister Donut, so I left half of this for you."And when I rummage through expired coupons and loose change after a day out to fish out a crumpled bag of grape gummies from the depths of my purse, she knows that it is an apology of sorts, for not spending the day with her.

Of course, if given the choice, I would choose a chocolate eclair untouched in its wax paper wrapping, every sprinkle still in place. Emily would probably do the same-I cannot flatter myself into thinking that every unwrapped, half-eaten pastry I bring home is somehow worth an entire bun to her. Even the waitress gave me an incredulous look when I asked her to pack the few strands of pasta left in my plate into a takeout box. But in collecting these tidbits of food and snacks, it is as though I am collecting bits of my day to share with her-the lemon ice tea I bought at Hi-life after shooting hoops at school, the sausage I ordered from a vendor near the thrift store, the bit of penne with meat sauce I saved from dinner with friends at the Italian restaurant downtown.

I may be hopelessly possessive when it comes to food. I may often find myself absentmindedly munching on whatever I happen to be holding, and may be addicted to gummies, doughnuts, and sugary snacks. Perhaps I bring home half-eaten snacks because I can do no better. But I like to think that, in bringing Emily half of a doughnut or a few rolls from dinner, I am somehow telling her that I wish she could have been there too.

Someone to talk to

2010-08-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

2010-08-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

A bug's life in the Yang house

2010-07-31T23:18:00.000-07:00

Whether clad in striped pajamas or a Donald Duck costume, whether lounging on the couch or perched on the dining room table, my mom is constantly prepared for battle. For while some choose to tackle countries or social institutions, her battle is with any cockroach, mosquito, and ant foolhardy enough to set an abdomen in her path. Usually this means the pests that inhabit this cauliflower-colored, 20 sq. ft. space we call home, and when the slipper smacks and the flyswatter sounds, the rest of us scramble to stay out of the way .

Though sounds of falling furniture or slamming bathroom doors have come to signal scrimmages in this ongoing war, most of my mom's work is done stealthily, in the hours after bedtime. It is not until I have woken in the morning that I learn of the mosquito that persisted in buzzing in her ear until she smashed it with my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird at 3 AM, or the cockroach my mom ended up tearing in half (armed with tissues, she assured me) to ensure it would not revive (something, she also assured me, cockroaches are known to do). She recounts these campaigns with the pride of a seasoned general recalling battles hard won, and though her accounts involve discovering caterpillars in the vegetables and laying siege to ant colonies, they impress me more than any war story ever could. While I cannot understand battle tactics or army formations, I do understand the horror of stepping over a dried orange peel and realizing that it has legs and has begun scuttling across the floor, or the disappointment of uncovering the fruit tart you've been saving for days only to find that ants have nibbled their way through it.

But for somehow to devotes so much of her free time to wrangling with creepy crawlies underneath the refrigerator, my mom also seems to feel a strange affinity for these intruders. After once discovering an entire cockroach casting balanced on an orange in our pantry, she decided to mount the display, exoskeleton and all, on our kitchen shelf. She inspected it, admired it, gloated over it, and pointed it out to visitors as though it were an art exhibit. The cockroach casting remained there for days until we coaxed her to discard it with promises of a newfangled mosquito zapper.

Swimming upstream

2010-07-31T09:28:00.000-07:00

Because my life tends to be a template of grays and browns, I often choose to deal in the figurative rather than the literal. With idioms come mentions of things thrilling and out of the ordinary (like lions and rolling stones), and when the closest you've come to selling your soul to anyone is succumbing to Bieber Fever, it becomes necessary to take certain liberties with language.

But this time, I have manage to transcend the curse of living only in the figurative. This time, I can, at last, use an idiom and mean it literally. This time, when I write that I swam upstream, I mean that I swam upstream. In a bathing suit. And goggles.

In an attempt to make something of a summer that has been squandered on Youtube and gummy bears, I agreed to go swimming for the first time since PE class ended a year ago. My friends and I headed to a swimming pool in a middle school nearby, they armed with towels and shampoo, I, with the flab I had accumulated over nine months of college (I had forgotten shampoo and soap). After floundering our way through several laps, we decided it was time to rest, and while the others relaxed in a warm bath, I ventured into another pool of cold water that wrapped around the spa. I found to my surprise, that the water moved counterclockwise. An invisible force propelled Spongebob-clad kids and neon colored floating boards in a gigantic circle, and I was riveted. I joined their ranks, amusing myself by kneeling on the tiled floor of the pool and riding the current, like a surfer, if surfers surfed on their knees.

Ten minutes later, the thrill of gliding around on my sore kneecaps had faded, and I decided I would become a rebel. I would swim upstream.

Maneuvering my way through the stream of swimmers so that I faced clockwise, I then began the doggy paddle of my life. The current shoved against my battered body relentlessly, and every so often, someone would barrel into me, and I would be carried several feet downstream. It was as though I alone had entered a salmon run, only for humans in swim caps, and though I had once watched a documentary on the salmon run, it was not until that moment that I began to feel a brotherhood with salmon everywhere. Only they knew this feeling of futility, of struggling against this single, unyielding force.

And though my thighs ached and the lifeguard was probably screaming "SOMEONE STOP HER," I felt strangely accomplished. As though, in my desperate thrashing, I had demonstrated the courage to not only swim against a current generated by powerful jets of chlorinated water discharged into a circular pool, but to carry myself with strength and determination even among naysayers, to paddle upstream even in life. I paddled forward, certain I had done what Elizabeth Bennet would have done had she snapped on a pair of goggles.

That is, until I paddled straight into one of the kids clinging to a floating board, elbowing him into the wall so forcefully that he burst into tears.

There is a time and place for swimming upstream. Wednesday afternoons at the Guangfu Middle School swimming pool is not one of them.

All in the name of beauty

2010-07-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

In the name of beauty, I would endure an entire afternoon in shoes two sizes too small, simply because I have always wanted to don a pair of pink and black tennis shoes. In the name of beauty, I would wear rabbit pajama bottoms even if they gave me an unbearable rash.

But I would not, in the name of beauty, stop myself from wandering to the refrigerator at least eight times a day and rummaging around for a stray popsicle or leftover sandwich. I would not save money meant for pop tarts and candies in order to purchase that shirt I've been eyeing. And not even in the name of beauty would I end my gummy bear addiction.

Thank goodness I'm no slave to beauty.

nekosama by mayelle

2010-07-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

TV Soulmate

2010-07-28T02:05:00.000-07:00

my sister

It is important to watch TV with someone who understands you. Someone who doesn't mind that you spent the past twenty minutes trying to guess what will happen next and so now have no idea what's going on, who appreciates the esoteric humor of uneven nostrils, and who agrees almost as fervently that the two men should just ditch the girl they're fighting over and start a life together. Someone who won't try to strangle you after you've ruined the second kissing scene in film (she also noticed the string of saliva), and who looks forward to watching 我們這一家 as much as you do.

I did not come to appreciate the value of a television soulmate until I spent an afternoon watching television with my uncle's family. The episode we happened to be watching involved scene after scene in which the characters seemed to do little but gaze fervently into one another's eyes while dramatic music swelled in the background. I suddenly remembered that my biology teacher once reminded us to watch for saccades (rapid shifting of the retina to focus on certain parts of an image) when the camera zoomed in on the eyes, and snorted in amusement at the thought of the lovers' eyes twitching uncontrollably to orchestral accompaniment. Once the snort had escaped, I regretted it. Snorting out loud while watching TV on someone else's couch had to be bad manners. Had I been watching tv with Emily, she would have been amused to learn about involuntary eye twitching, but my cousin simply glanced at me, disturbed by my insensitivity to the lovers' plight.

Our TV-watching ritual at home involves yelling constantly at the screen, finishing each other's sentences, making irrelevant observations regarding asymmetrical eyebrows-and an unnecessary number of hi-fives. "She almost tripped! She almost tripped! Did you see that? Hi-five!" I don't know why I find romantic climaxes so hilarious, or "she almost tripped" worthy of a hi-five. I don't know why I feel a compulsion to make a prediction every few minutes (I am rarely correct, but I always speak with great conviction), or feel a need to substitute professions of love with lines about cucumber sandwiches and boogers. But at least Emily feels the same way. And while none of my friends can understand my obsession with 我們這一家, Emily knows why I laugh every time 花媽 starts lecturing her kids or wages a war against the mosquitoes in the living room. Because we share so many things in our lives, Emily has also come to share my sense of humor. She knows what I am thinking when orchestra starts and the male and female lead get that look in their eye. And she knows our mom looks exactly like 花媽 when she gets starts swatting those mosquitoes.

Smart

2010-07-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

In the first two years of your life, smart is being able to repeat "mama" and "dada" under the scrutiny of ever-doting relatives who can't seem to find anything else to play with. As you enter kindergarten, smart is no longer having potty-trained yourself, but rather becomes remembering the words to "Yankee Doodle" or the pledge of allegiance before everyone else. In high school, smart is being able memorize every single formula, fact, and term in the textbook and knowing when to regurgitate them. Perhaps by the time middle age rolls around, smart becomes knowing which vendors to haggle with in the marketplace, and being able to buy a head of cabbage at your own price.

"Smart" is actually a measure of what society expects from you at that particular stage in life. As a baby, you are expected to entertain and perform, and once you catch on, you are deemed a smart baby. As a kindergartener, you begin training to become a moral, upstanding citizen, training that involves instilling a sense of patriotism by drilling songs and chants (sometimes of questionable nature--macaroni? "with the girls be handy"?) into your mind. Once you succeed in holding onto these articles of culture and legacy, you are smart. In high school, you begin amassing the knowledge and skills that will eventually transform you into a productive member of society. Exams and homework become essential tools in showing you how to structure your thinking, and if you find the right way to fill in the blanks and crank out those essays, you are smart. Being smart simply means fulfilling someone's expectations for you, and once those standards change, you are left groping for something you thought was unchangeable.