get up

it's good to have these talks, i think i need them for my sanity.
thanks for reminding me why i do this, why you do this, and how we walk this path together.
thanks for showing me the silver lining when all i can see is the storms,
and for believing in me when i lose faith.









and at times like these i gotta remember to ask myself the most important question, "what would sonya johnson do?"

double rainbow

on the way home from work i saw a double rainbow out the windows of the train. i guess life is a lot like that these days. in the midst of dark clouds, there's a ray of sun and it's just enough to create something beautiful in the midst of darkness. the scientific explanation leaves me somewhat wanting so i'll take it as a sign that it's not the end of the world...

so what will i do now?
i really don't know.

but if you hold my hand and tell me it's all going to be okay in the end, maybe i'll believe it.

sunday rants

So I guess we're on Plan F these days. I think the worst part is I'm at that point in my life where I know exactly what I want to do, but the closer I get to doing it, the further away I really am. A basic fact of life is that I don't get to go to graduate school unless I have money to pay for it. Uggh.

Maybe next year...but I'm so tired of saying, "next year", ya know...

oh it's a monday alright...

it was dead at work (weeeirrd!),
my internet's not working...again,
for like the 5th night in a row i haven't gotten much sleep,
and i almost had a nervous breakdown when i couldn't find my class.

yep, it's monday. let's hope tomorrow's better.
maybe if george bush could refrain from saying anything stupid and arrogant for 24 hours I'd settle for that. (I still can't believe people voted for this man...)

The end of civilization

How do we change course, is it an impossible task?

Even at this late date, I don't believe that it is impossible to change the course of where we’re headed, (even though it feels that way). History tells us this, and I think we can trust that. If we had the ability to step back from the present and see things from another vantage point, it would no doubt seem less difficult that it appears from here.
Unfortunately we are like ants scurrying along the ground unaware what lies beyond the next piece of gravel. But in all of history there are cycles of growth and decline, and maybe these are the new dark ages, but this too shall pass.

My greatest hope at this point is that we can survive all of this and learn from it.

where is the movement?

Where is the Movement? What happened to real opposition? Where did everyone go?

I think for the large part the movement has retreated and a lot of people have decided to stick with safe easy paths so they won’t get let down again.

I remember in the heady days of J20 in 2000 when activists were able to shut the WTO meeting in Seattle...it felt like the little people truly had the power to tell the evil capitalist minions to go fuck themselves. It was still felt like we were going to win…and could send the forces of darkness packing, but after the inaguration of King George Bush II, things have become so bad that even my worst nightmares pale by way of comparison. We've seen so much regress these days it makes me dizzy. Things in this country have gotten so much worse in the past 5 years it's just mindboggling.

My own sense of feeling powerless began around September 11th...at the time I was incredibly sad that such an obvious wakeup call was completely misread and used as an excuse to usher in the dark ages of civil liberties. Not only did I think attacking Afghanistan was a lame move (Osama bin Laden after all, was from Saudi Arabia, and that's where all the real action is, not the broke-ass fucked up backwater of Afghanistan), but going after Iraq (which frankly had nothing to do with anything) was an even more surreal proposition. And what both amazed and horrified me then is that seemingly intelligent people could say with straight faces that this was a great idea, and that going to war with Iraq was the answer to all our problems. Had everyone gone mad? Could no one see how terribly flawed all of this was? I knew then, what I still know now, and with a sense of growing horror, felt quite certain that this would be the Vietnam of our era.
And so like any good social activist, I put in a lot of energy into protesting that inexplicably stupid line of reasoning that my so-called betters were exercising. But yet when March of 2003 rolled around, and the war happened anyway, it was so depressing…On that day I knew that any hope I had for this country had utterly died.

But what really did me in was a year and a half later, when I woke up that morning and went to another day of work after the election results were in, and heard that George Bush was still president of the United States, and thus would continue to personally shit on me and all that I stood for, and fuck everyone over (who was not rich and powerful) directly for 4 more years (wars?) and whose long reaching effects would probably defile freedom and democracy for the rest of my adult life...well, I just could stand another minute of it.

I couldn’t bear to hear any more...with that, I withdrew from the outside world for months. That moment, the infamy of Ohio, I think that was the pivotal event that killed off almost all of the momentum of “the moment”. I mean, how could someone Bush be re-elected(?) inspite of being such an obviously inept moron? How could people sleep at night? That bothered me for sooo long and I became really really bitter. The only thing that enabled me to move on was probably the fact I was living way out in the middle of nowhere, and able to remain unaware of what was going on so long as I didn’t open a newspaper or listen to the radio. I was already not watching tv...and I could pretend up in the land of clouds, high on the eastern slopes of the mountains where I spent my days, that everything awful and bad was far far away and couldn’t reach me.
It was what I needed at the time, but of course, you can only delude yourself for so long. Even a hermit cannot shut the world out forever…

On top of all that, though, I think a few more nails in the coffin of the progressive movement are the changes in the composition in the Supreme Court, and the fact that there’s no real opposition to Bush’s moronic agenda at the moment other than the Senate (and that’s a stretch because on a legislative front, it requires Republican senators to vote against the party line to prevent some god-awful things from getting railroaded through). To make things even rosier, every day, whether I try to or not, I hear there’s even more horrible shit coming our way.

Everything I’ve fought against all my life (racism, xenophobia, social justice, environmental desecration) is being assaulted by a man who would find the workings of a third grade classroom vigorously challenging. It’s more than most of us can bear, I think…to live in a world that’s this fucked, and feeling like vast majority of people REALLY DON’T GIVE A SHIT what happens. (But what never ceases to surprise me is that a lot of people really do care, they just feel so powerless, and that’s a vicious cycle.

Have we all quit? Have I quit?

I have a feeling that most people haven’t quit all together, but they’re either licking their wounds somewhere, taking an extended time out (and recharging their batteries), or maybe trying to figure out what direction to go, and what to do next.
It’s not the same as quitting, but unfortunately on the surface, it looks the same.

So far though, I haven’t heard anyone (other than smirking Republicans, may you sink with the Titanic you sail on) suggest we should just all give up, but since no one is wanting to stick out their neck, it appears that everyone has quit fighting and given the fiends license to do whatever damage they will.
Honestly though, I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this lately, but my guess is that anyone who’s still got some fight left in them is regrouping and preparing for Armageddon (or the last battle)…

who has time for activism

I envy people who have time to even think about activism. Right now, to me, that feels like an amazing luxury. For example, on the FNB list, there's a vigorous argument about whether or not all chapters should serve only vegan or vegetarian food. On on the IMC list, the question of whether or not to become involved in advertising. I'd personally be thrilled to have the time and energy to think about such abstract things. Although I can incorporate “activism” in how I conduct my own affairs, and reflect it in the day-to-day choices I make, anything smacking of further outreach or interaction is pretty much out of the question.


Frankly, at the moment, I don’t have time to keep up with current affairs beyond reading the headlines of newspapers on street corners, don’t have time to do volunteer work with any of the amazing organizations here, and don't even have time to socialize with like minded people. In the past I was involved in all kinds of worthy social justice projects that I now no longer have time for.

Right now I feel like I'm really not making much of a difference in the world. I tend to feel pretty powerless much of the time to change anything around me. Conversations about "the meaning of life" are as close as I get to “activism” at the moment.

I’m seriously hoping that when I start teaching somewhere and no longer have to work 2 jobs and go to school all at the same time, I can incorporate more activism and social justice back into my life. At the same time I'm also well aware that I have to be rather careful about how I go about it if I want to have a public service career. But being an educator is a good platform for advocating social justice, and I mean full well to take advantage of it. Although I'm sure there are people out there who violently disagree, I think that examinint the causes and effects of institutional racism and poverty and other forms of social equality are worthy educational goals, and I think in being a teacher, it is a good way of furthering civil rights. The work can be painful, and breaking down assumptions is hard work, but who doesn't want to live in a better world? Getting people in a place where they can think critically, and think for themselves is probably worth whatever sacrifices I am making now with my free time.

geography is destiny

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and a friend brought the topic up the other day.
I tend to agree with him, living in Memphis was a very unique experience that shaped the course of my life in a lot of unexpected ways. When you get right down to it, living in Memphis is so profoundly different than living anywhere else. I can't do it justice with mere words, but back there and then, there were so many tragically beautiful and profoundly fucked up things that just can’t be replicated anywhere else. Living in a place where you can see every spectrum of the human experience is bound to have a profound effect on you. In any given day I could count on seeing almost anything at all, ugliness and beauty, sadness and bravery, hatred and love, the best and worst of human nature...in a way that I just don't think happens anywhere else. There are a thousand places that are far more exciting than Memphis, but I think the facade is thinner there than anywhere. Everything felt ten times more real than it does anywhere else, and at least ten times as unpredictable. People lived with a greater intensity than I've seen anywhere else.

One thing I’ve discovered in my nomadic life is that geography is destiny. Where you are has a profound influence on what your life is like. The variables you have to work with in a given place are so different when you compare living in Kabul, Afghanistan versus Dayton, Ohio. A person living in either of those places is bound to turn out differently...Where you are in the world matters a great deal.

Sometimes I can’t believe how different my life is every time I move someplace different. It’s like becoming a whole new person every time you pick up your feet and move. It's incredibly hard to deal with sometimes, because it is a process of identity re-configuration. In fact, it feels like wherever I go, I inevitably leave something major behind and have to add some new piece to this crazy patchwork quilt of experiences to make up for what I lost, and in the end barely recognize what the new configuration is…

It would be hard to quantify, if asked what kind of effect living in Memphis had on me overall. I think only someone who's been there can truly understand it.

mystery train

and all i was really looking for was something for class, but was feelin' kinda nostalgic anyway, and when i saw mystery train sitting on the shelf over at north portland branch, (hell yeah!) i couldn't resist a trip down memory lane.

like all people in memphis, i had seen it more than a few times, since it's required viewing. the first time i saw it, i just caught the end, coming home from work one night and everyone was sitting around watching the last 10 minutes or so...
like most jarmusch films, it gets better with repeat watchings, as you pick up a few more details every time you see it. watching it reminds me of the good ol' days when i used to slink around in the parts of town where most of the action in the film takes place...i remember walking past beale and front late one night when the amtrak was pullin' out, and we saw those guys breaking into somebody's car. i remember sitting in the arcade on lonely days when i only had a couple of bucks. i remember cruising past the lamar theater on the way home from downtown. those were some interesting times...

wow it's the sun!

Today actually featured some sunshine! I had quite forgotten what that was...the rainbow was pretty cool, and i love big dark dramatic clouds with the sun peeking through them.

I hadn't been to sylvania in a long long time. I wish I could have spent more time in the library, but we're on a schedule. I had also forgotten how nice the trees are out there.
Funny how spending a whole day running errands makes you feel like you've done nothing of importance. My days off aren't very fun at the moment...

Finally some scrabble! I'm so out of practice but it's fun to just get out there and DO it. This is one of the few useful applications of my seemingly limitless vocabulary. I should teach the kids speed scrabble...I bet they'd get into it.

riot folk

whew even i can manage to get out and about once in awhile instead of doing a darn good impersonation of a shut in.
for like the first time in i don't know how long, i actually went to a show.
i'll admit that it helps that there wasn't the usual $10 cover. (i realize that folks gotta pay the rent, but the $10 covercharge is a surefire guarantee that i won't be in attendance).
so i shimmied on over to 616 and caught the fine riot folk who were passing through. thank god it occurred to someone to post it on indymedia so i actually found out they were here. i'd always heard about these fine kids, but alas they don't pass through memphis on a regular basis (back when i got out a lot more and did things like go to shows). i'm a big fan of woody guthrie and pete seeger anyhoo so this is just my cup of tea. as i said in the previous post, kids playing guitars and singing really heartfelt songs about the state of the world.

aside from being entertaining and thoughtprovokingly clever, it was kind of interesting to be in a roomful of kids that remind me of the world i came out of. anyone there would have fit right in back in at declerye. listening to riotfolk reminds me of sitting on my own front porch listening to someone i know playing songs both new and old on a guitar while we drink coffee and tea and sit in a circle clapping and banging on pots and pans, shouting and dancing when moved to do so...

it was home-y...






ah, those were the days.
my current life feels so...linear. for a few hours i was able to trascend its petty restrictions and slip out of reckoning, remember how marvelous it felt to be totally free of it. i used to live this way all the time, in deference to cyclical time. in that mode the only time frames that had meaning were day and night, winter and summer, sowing and harvesting, life, death and rebirth. now i live in a world of boxes, and my time is compartmentalized, stamped with a number and told what to do at every moment. and each moment has no connection to the past, present or future.
it has an effect on you to live in a linear fashion...rather dehumanizing. no wonder people get so caught up in it, and forget all about the big picture. i feel like i even do this and i'm well aware of how it feels to live outside of this invisible jailcell of days and hours. in the old days you did only what needed to be done, only what made sense...now a lot of the things we do with our time are not what we would choose to do, but rather what we are told to do, or what we have to settle for because all the real choices have been taken away.

random list #488

found this list on a friends blog. although corny, i think it's a good check in with where i'm at today...
Current mood :: calm yet anticipatory, worried and wistful
Current music :: I just got back from a a riot folk show…kids playing guitars and singing heartfelt songs about the state of the world.
Current taste :: soups (any kind). It's winter, soup is my friend.
Current hair :: day 3 no wash the way I like it best, nearly perfect
Current clothes :: what I call the Oregon Lumberjack Combo (a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans. Way unfashionable these days. Oh and I’m rockin’ the sun records shirt because Memphis is on my mind a lot at the moment.
Current annoyance :: bills—do they ever stop coming? The peeling skin on my hands. Not being able to track down my prof…
Current smells :: the honey coconut-y smell of my hand lotion, the smell of barbecue sauce coming from behind the bar counter. Various people who all smell like different things. Cigarettes every time I walk down the street.
Current thing I ought to be doing :: reading stuff for class, it’s tomorrow.
Current windows open :: MS Word, the blog I got this from.
Current desktop picture:: a wedding picture
Current favorite band :: none specific…
Current book :: Richard III by Shakespeare
Current cd in stereo :: something I found at the thriftstore involving music from the andes with pan flutes, guitars, and charrangos. It reminds me of my days in the Siskiyou Mountains.
Current hate :: littering! I’m so tired of seeing other people’s careless trash every where I walk. Uggh!
Have a dream that keeps coming back? :: I keep dreaming about either declerye or crazy shit like hurricanes…
Read the newspaper? :: not recently but sometimes I read news online. I’ve kinda been on a media sabbatical since Nov. 3, 2004.
Have any gay or lesbian friends? :: probably at least half of the people I can think of qualify for either title. I guess we’re into the same things.
Believe in miracles? :: yeah but I could use a few myself
Consider yourself tolerant of others? :: Yeah. Even people I don’t like. I just tend to either feel sorry for them, or deal with them on the basis that they’re less evolved specimens.

Consider love a mistake? :: No, It can get you into trouble though. But it’s a beautiful thing when it appears, and if nurtured carefully can sustain you for a very long time in ways that nothing else can. Love is never a mistake but the ways in which we act upon it with each other in ignorance can be…
Believe in God? :: i believe in 神, it’s more like the force. I believe that there’s a point where all the powerful mysterious forces in this universe come together into a kind of unity, but I don’t think of it as the classic Christian model aka white dude with a beard and a robe. But I’m definitely one of those who think there’s a grain of truths in all the beliefs held in the world, and that we’re too small to conceive of the truth so we create it for ourselves, giving it whatever names we feel comfortable oppressing each other with.
Hate yourself :: no. but sometimes I get frustrated with the things I do…
Care about looks? :: not really. I care more about personality, integrity and other non-physical traits.
Ever been in love? :: am currently.
Do you believe in love at first sight? :: it's happened before but it usually gets you in trouble, because it’s not always reciprocated. Ouch.
Do you believe in "the one?" :: yes, but I don’t think you are limited to only “one”.
Describe your ideal significant other :: It sounds corny but I think I’ve pretty much found them already. Someone who has a lot of common interests, can deal with my quirks, meshes well with me, believes in a lot of things that I believe in, and is also warm and caring and compassionate. And happens to be darn cute.
Last thing you Bought :: 2 cds at the riotfolk show.
...Ate :: the crumbs in the bottom of a bag of chips.
...Drank :: hot chocolate
...Read :: the Portland indymedia website.
The most embarrassing CD in your collection? :: my tapes are much more embarrasing than my cds... but i ain't sharin';)
Your bedroom like? :: since i share it with 2 other life form, i have very little control over it's overall state. it reeks of boy and cat and contains things i would never keep in a bedroom.
Your favorite thing for breakfast? :: it varies but i eat grits a lot. like yer mom, they're cheap and easy.
Your favorite restaurant? :: i can't afford to eat out at all right now so i don't even want to think about it.
What's on your bedside table? :: usually a book, whatever headscarf i wore that day, my necklace and a jar containing lucky bamboo
What is your secret guaranteed weeping movie? :: hmm, i can't think of anything.
What is your biggest fear?:: selling out...
What are you most insecure about? :: being unable to remember normal things like everyone else.
Do you know anyone famous? :: not really.
What do you carry with you at all times? :: my umbrella and my trimet pass. in that order. this is portland after all.
What do you miss most about being little? :: believing i could fly and that the world was a kind place.
Are you happy with your given name? :: yeah it works fer me
How much money would it take to get you to give up the Internet for one year? :: not much if i didn't need it for work or school.
What color is your bedroom? :: blue
Do you talk a lot? :: no, unless i'm really excited about something (rare)
Do poor, homeless, or starving people sometimes annoy you? :: no because i have much more in common with that crowd than rich, gated-mansion-dwelling gluttons. what does annoy me is that there's no reason why anyone should be starving or even homeless in most cases. there's plenty of food in this world, and tons of unused property. completely ridiculous that food goes to waste and buildings sit empty full of rats and pigeons.
Do you consider yourself to be a nice person? :: not really nice. just indifferently tolerant.

crappy day...

today was not very satisfying at all...oh well, some days are like this and not every day can be a good day. and as the saying goes, "some days are better than none"

today was the weird combination of boring and frantic, but at least the gloomy feeling was consistent if nothing else really achieved such status. i hate it when people get on my case. okay so i'm retarded, and have a permanent front row seat on the re-re bus...shit. the guy across from me on the train was either ocd, or just creepy because he kept stroking his leg in a rather bizarre fasion whilst reading a john grisham novel. oddly the wall street journal didn't generate any of this leg stroking activity. hmm. i guess the other thing i'll confess that i totally don't get is the hipster kids, who look like dorks from the 80's. but then again, what do i know about fashion? i haven't really ever been fashionable. and i'm not about to start now.

sigh. maybe tomorrow will be better. if nothing else though, i can count on it being at least a bit more interesting. with high school kids, there's never a dull moment. especially not with j----, l---- or j----- in the vicinity. lord love them, but they're a handful. fortunately i have the patience of the mountains.

this little flower's feelin' a little better

finally feeling better after being sick for a couple of weeks.

now i can get back on top of my game.

mlk day reflections

a sure sign you are no longer in the south, is when you have to tell people that today is a holiday, and they actually have to ask you why...

but i had to work today.
i was the only person in my house who had this problem.
even my body knew that i should have slept in for another hour.

here on martin luther king jr's birthday i'm listening to marvin gaye "what's going on" and thinking, the funny thing is the more things change, the more they stay the same.
s---- tells me lately there's been white power rallys against migrant workers around here, and it seems like everybody gotta hate on somebody like they ain't got business of they own to tend to...couldn't tell you why...liz an' i were kickin' it the other day and the topic of racism comes up. and all i'm saying is people don't think up this shit all by themselves 'cause baby there ain't nothing new under the sun, and you know a lot of the kids get these attitudes straight from their parents...and who knows what it is that gets people feelin' the way they do, but my theory is there's some jealousy involved, on a subconscious level. folks like to fight over crumbs while "the man" walk off with the whole pie. kinda pathetic.

so i guess instead of gettin' all analytical on y'all, i'll just leave you with the obvious, "don't hate the player, hate the game". and i think martin woulda said amen to that if he were still around to kick it with.

word.

cliffhanger

pretty uneventful day up until someone told me i could go see a basketball game.
living right by the rose garden has it's advantages...

so we walked down the street bypassed the ticket scalpers, got our $10 tickets, and went to see the blazers play the cavaliers. the amazing thing is that the blazers actually won...but i think it's because lebron wasn't on top of his game last night. after the first half it was like the cavaliers couldn't get nothing in that basket 'cept for air...so the score kept pretty much neck and neck and up until it was over i really wasn't sure who was gonna win the game.

yeah, i like basketball...what can i say...i'm a hoosier for crissake. and i used to hit all my brother's games back in the day. kinda fun to go to nba games, but you know i miss the hokey charm of sitting in bleachers at southern belt conference teams without all the hype of slicker operations...but that's another story for another day.

plum blossoms

walkin' down the street on the way home from work, i noticed that the plums lining the streets have little fuschia colored buds on their tips, waiting for warmer days to come coax the blossoms forth...

the long dark days of winter are setting like the sun, soon camelias will give their way to other delights.

and i can start thinking about what to plant...

thursday's train of thought

sonic textures: listening to godspeed on an incredibly bleak and rainy thursday morning may have been a bit much, but i kind of enjoy the kind of sombre trance-like transcendent feeling i get from this particular tape. i love the way everything becomes more surreal with this sort of a soundtrack, including my utterly boring daily commute (usually the only excitement is discovering a new tree growing in the ditch or seeing mushrooms popping up along the sidewalk, or dodging the minefield of big nasty slugs).

my reflection upon leaving was that in the south, family IS everything, and we southerners do make a big deal about it and take the whole notion a lot more seriously than people out here do. (I think people move out west to escape their families, not become closer to them). Westerners (by this I mean people from California, Oregon, and other adjacent states) seem to subscribe to a sort of rugged individualism that we southerners find rather questionable. In fact it is not socially acceptable to decline to participate in the guanxi-like system that you belong to in the south, where your identity is based more on how you know people and fit in to existing order, than on whatever merits you may have personally. Your family (which in a sense includes far more than your immediate blood relatives) IS your support network, and "wanting to go it alone" or "stand on your own two feet" is a rather odd notion that defies the logic of the culture. This is why, my dears, that family is such a big deal, but some people can't stand it and find it restricting...and i guess that's why they move to california in the first place.

Today was the first day of class...well it woulda been the second if i had felt up to venturing out on Monday...but anyhow it seems like it might be fun, and i don't think she'll give us a chance to fall asleep. Now if I can just get motivated to do all the reading that's required... this may be where audiobooks might have to be utilized...it's hard to get motivated to read anything academica after a day at work.

pooop

waaaah i'm sick.
yep.
finally succumbed to one of the many plagues making the rounds. between the school kids, public transportation and work, somebody somewhere passed off their nasty little viruses to me.
so now i have zero energy. just as school's about to start.
guess i should be glad it's not christmas though, everyone else was sick then, poor bastards.
so now it's my turn.
i will see about going to class on a strictly guest appearance basis. i'm too tired to stay up much past 8pm at the moment.

yawn.

i am so going to bed now.

blerg

i feel wretched today so i had to stay home from work...

i hate to forfeit a chance to earn some money because i'm about to be pretty broke when i have to pay tuition next week, but it gave me an excuse to work on slogging through some financial aid material that i'll have to deal with by next friday, so i need all the time i can get.

you have to fill out activity sheets and write essays for these applications...weee. i'm also gonna have to fill out another fafsa again, my attempt at doing it online didn't go so well. then again, it would be easier if i had a w-2 handy...

other than doing a lot of sleeping off my fatigue, and staring at the computer, it's been a pretty quiet day.

and that's all for the best.

oh what a day

what a day...some guy was all mackin' on me on the bus, but not in a creepy way. just kinda funny, it hasn't happened in awhile. reminds me more of memphis, only there it woulda been some creepy guy with a caseworker and a parole officer's numbers programmed in his cellphone.

i had one of those days that every English tutor dreams of...two boys reading out loud without me having to do a whole lot of anything to keep the momentum going. Plus I saw H--- doing some actual work, albeit reluctantly. No L----though, don't know where he was but word on the street is that it was sports related.

Some woman was standing in front of the train, or laying in front of the train, or something...i dunno. held it up for 10 minutes. maybe she was laying in the street.
all i know is that there was a whole street fulla people and as far as i can tell, ain't nobody try to do anything to move her out of the street or anything. What the hell is wrong with folks? If you saw someone laying in the street, wouldn't you try to move them out of harm's way?
I don't know what is wrong with everybody...people don't know what to do with themselves, like they ain't got no upbringin' in this day and age. hmpf!

bus in the rain, glutton for punishment

can't say it's a good idea to go to a place like uwajimaya on the bus...especially not when you are planning on actually getting stuff. and I don't get to go very often...so inevitably there's too much stuff to carry home, and it all ends up being really heavy and awkward. but i got off work early and was sorely tempted.
all of you know, there's some places that you are better off if you go alone, (because anyone you drag along won't appreciate it in quite the same way you do) and for me uwajimaya is one of them. i have the compulsive need to look at EVERYTHING in the store which drives brian nuts. i can't focus on what i'm really there for, because the place is crammed full of distractions. maybe that's why i don't get to go more than once every 6 months.

now that i've got that out of my system, i had to lug everything home in the rain.
not so fun.
at least i didn't have to stand in it for half an hour, but it wasn't a very pleasant trip back home.
i reflected on all of this while i was shivering waiting for the 40. Two 10's, Two 8's but no 40...

Back at home I made sushi in utter defiance of good sense. Sometimes it's worth doing a lot of work to get exactly what you want...

let the new come to you

"Embrace fully your capacity to create,
to think in unlimited ways,
and to pursue everything that you have been wanting.
Be flexible, open and willing to let the new come to you.
"This can be the most joyous, prosperous, and creative time of your life."-- Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer

Good words of advice for the new year me thinks.

Walking down the street i noticed funny things are blooming...here it is, only January and already i see some crazy azaleas in flower...The neighbor's yard has some early crocuses sticking up defiantly out of the ground, and I've seen some rather mysterious shrubs and groundcovers blooming all over the place. The camelias though have been at it for awhile but are really starting to come into their own. Here it is, definitely NOT spring, but these tantalizing hints are poking out everywhere. When spring DOES hit, for real, it's gonna be glorious around here.

It seemed completely extraneous to go to work today. Nothing else was open, and we had no mail or UPS pickups all day. But open we were, and that's that. Tomorrow I suppose, things will go back to some sort of normalcy. For me it's time to get ready to shift gears and dive in to full participation in the things I've only been dabbling in, so far. No more sitting on the sidelines, I gotta go at it...(I reckon my brother's feeling the same way right now) Time to stop spectatin' and start regulatin'.

cookietime

my last day off for awhile, so I spent it baking cookies.

also ended up staying up way too late playing games. but i like me some games...(right now i'd about kill for a good game of scrabble)

very satisfying day indeed...

あけましておめでとうございます

Here's wishing you (and all my peeps everywhere), the best of luck and happiness in the year ahead.

Happy New Year!

よい おとし を おむかえ
ください