Work

"You take the pieces of the dreams that you have
Because you don't like the way they seem to be going.
You cut them up and spread them out on the floor
You're full of hope as you being rearranging."

Recently, I reread an entry in my journal that I wrote a year and a half ago. I was so unhappy, I had to leave work early, and the only place I found solace was on the second floor of the now closed Donnell Library. I remember blindly walking there, taking out my journal, and writing out all that I could not say (at least without being reprimanded or fired) about how I felt regarding the whole operation. I no longer remember what made me so upset, because all those niggling details were, at the end of the day, extremely petty and not worth the turbulent emotions they elicited. Perspective is always sharper in the backward glance. Well, I reread that journal entry when I was sitting in my quiet little studio 3,500 miles away, right after I had finished printing my first job in San Francisco. The distance, physical and emotional, that has been traversed since was breathtaking. All I could do was feel happy for what has happened, and for what I've accomplished since leaving an undesirable situation.

"And so I tread the only road
The only road I know."

There have been idle days since leaving my old job. Those days were never truly leisurely, though. My mother never believed in idleness, and did her best to instill that belief in me. At the end of life, the only thing that remains is one's life's work. So beyond paying the bills, and gaining material possessions, the one fundamental lesson I learned wholeheartedly from unhappy work experiences is that I must feel that what I do is creative. I need something to be made by me. I can't live doing work that's all about money-pushing, sector-analyzing, meeting-attending, people-managing. I remember having to approach a colleague to question some pittance he charged for hand lotion somewhere in Asia, because it might or might not have been part of our expense policy. And while I know that that's not what most jobs are about, some singular moment of focus on an insignificant detail, that conversation summed up how utterly stupid my job was. I could not give an iota of a shit at that point, and looking back now, I am surprised at how composed I was dealing with a situation that was such a huge waste of life.

I definitely think about my work more now. And not in the paranoid "Did I fuck something up, even though I've triple-checked everything?" kind of way. Mostly, it's about how far I can take a pun in the form of a drawing, or how I can make image registration more precise, or how I can be more efficient using certain applications. Creative, utterly self-serving details, and boy does it feel fantastic! I don't ever want this to end, and funnily, I would do my old job again, if I knew that it would bring me back to this point.

Coming Home

"Cold like some magnificent skyline,
Out of my reach but always in my eye line."

I went home to New York for Thanksgiving, and arrived at dawn in the city. Michelle picked me up from JFK after my redeye from San Francisco, and we embarked on four days of ritual and quality time together. We shopped in the Union Square Farmers' Market for veggies and herbs, in Whole Foods for the remaining ingredients, and then headed to our favorite neighborhood Chinese place Baby Buddha for a farewell lunch (they're closing after however many tens of years). Michelle had brined a 12-pound turkey for three days, spatchcocked it, and then grilled it. That's right. Grilled.



On Thanksgiving, I took advantage of the cloudy weather, and the lack of people on the West Side Highway – oh sorry, now it's the Chelsea Waterside Park ::eyeroll:: – to get in a run before the gorging.



After Junior High, I stopped running competitively, and completely. Even when I used to run, I was a sprinter, and rarely ran any race longer than the 200m. I started running again in San Francisco early one Sunday morning, just because I wanted to breathe in more of the city. At that time, the streets were still quiet, and empty: perfect for my loud wheezing, and lumbering pace. From that first run, I realized that 1) my boobs have grown since Junior High 2) the rest of my body is also very different from my prepubescent body, proportionally and 3) running is damn hard to take up again after a 15-year hiatus. I labored through three miles, walking when I couldn't stand the cramp near my right Achilles, and trundled home beat, but exhilarated. The next run felt easier, and slowly, I've built up my strength again.

Running on the West Side Highway's bike path was really nice. There's landscaping along the path now, and I ran up a platform to the tall grasses; I felt transported out of the city to some boardwalk above the sand dunes on Fire Island. Running downtown, I looked towards Stuyvesant and Battery Park City. There was construction for more park space, but it was out of the way of the path, and I only had shrubbery, river, sky, and skyline to focus on. Two tracks from Keane played on repeat, and I switched between pushing myself harder during the faster song, and gentler jogging to the slower song. There are some songs that are just so perfect to run to. When I used to jog on the treadmill at MIT's Zesiger Center during those Boston summers, I would run and run and run to songs I associated with certain people, and any confusing feelings about them would be forced out of my system. Running back uptown, I saw SoHo, the Meatpacking District, and Chelsea in all their sparkling glory. Luxury condos, luxury hotels, luxeluxeluxe shoved down my gasping throat, and yet, it was still beautiful, because I don't wish it to have stayed shitty and dangerous. I am just still shocked over the rapid change in these areas, and I miss my childhood when these neighborhoods were not overrun with chicks breaking their ankles in high heels walking on cobblestones, and with dudes drowning in eau de douche. Alas, money brought them here, and money also brought this beautiful path I was running on. It's a twisted feeling, this feeling about money.

I am glad I left. The past several months in San Francisco forced me to live a braver life, one where I had to relearn some basic skills that I had lost over the years mired in a demanding job. I wanted to spend a good chunk of my visit by myself, so I can traipse at my leisure through old stomping grounds. Even when I was alone, I found myself reaching out to strangers to chat, or to exchange random pleasantries. And I was comfortable with it. It was even easier in restaurants and bars to start chatting with the people around me. I remember when I used to think that that was one of the most difficult things to do, because it was always awkward for me, or because it always had felt unnatural. Now, poof! I also biked around Brooklyn with Michelle. She took me biking in traffic for the first time a couple of months before I moved, and it was a nerve-wracking experience. This time, I sped ahead, handled body and machine with aplomb, felt no fear, and reveled in the feeling of freedom on a bicycle speeding through the brownstoned streets of Carroll Gardens and Park Slope. I saw Brooklyn and New York through different eyes, and it would not have happened without my move to San Francisco. My old home has become even richer because of the experiences I had elsewhere.

After leaving my old job, I was averse to looking back at it. I looked it fully in the face today when I went back to visit old coworkers and old managers. After lunch and coffee with some old colleagues, I walked around the floors, saw some new spaces that were not part of the company before, and caught up briefly with people whose memories I had pushed out of my head for over a year. Going back into that building where so many strong feelings had coursed through me, I only remembered the positive ones. I know that I had cried, had yelled, had cursed there. I know that I had felt helpless, and angry there. Now, there's only gladness that I can sit down with the people who are still there, and laugh over past experiences. The past year has not been kind, and it shows in a lot of my old coworkers' faces. We still hugged, felt happy for a moment, and had good wishes for one another upon our farewells. Despite 70-hour work weeks there for two years, I had forgotten what floor my group is on. Riding the elevator all the way to the top, I only thought about all that I wanted to tell old friends of my new adventures, of my new life, outside of that little world we all used to inhabit.

I fly back to SF in a few hours...to my new home, and to this:



<3<3

Ramblings from San Francisco

It takes a lot to know a city, to REALLY know it. During a late night beer with friends outside the neighborhood laundromat/café/bar, I felt no closer to San Francisco after a month of living here. Too soon. I imagined myself sitting in Union Square on a late spring evening, and the thought alone transported me back to a home I know and love. I would close my eyes, and send little feelers to all parts of the city, and know it, understand it. The sound of traffic would blend into these thoughts, flow with these little feelers, and travel to all the places I've ever been in New York to grab a piece of the memory for when I'm sitting outside the laundromat/café/bar listening to a live band play unfamiliar music in an unfamiliar city.

The move was uneventful. It rained early that morning we left New York, and I rode the car to the airport mostly in silence. The big moments never hit me as much as I expect them to. They never have as much of an impact as the movies, television, or the media tell me they should. When my dad first told me my grandmother had passed away when I was eight, I immediately burst into tears, not because I was overcome with grief and surprise, but because I thought that that would be the most appropriate response. With age, I realize that big occurrences don't elicit an explosion of emotion from me; they are more like a slow burn that finally becomes unbearable, so I let it out one way or another. Watching the neighborhood fly by in the rain, I only felt like I was going to come back someday. The tender memories of all the good times didn't flood (until now), and letting go at that moment seemed easy.

I recently read an article on solitary confinement that elucidated its effects and the amount of time it takes for these effects to manifest. People need social contact, a quality I did not appreciate or believe when I was young. At one point, I wanted to live in an oceanside cabin in Maine with cats, and books, by myself for the rest of my life as an ideal retirement scenario. I thought that that would be enough. Though I won't be confined, I wonder how long it would have taken me to become psychotic with just cats, trees, literature, and the ocean to keep me company. I find myself craving interaction here. On quiet days when the dog is just not enough of an eloquent companion, there is a palpable need to reach out and make contact with someone. Not that just anybody will do, no no. I'm a beggar, and yet, I'm still a chooser. I often crave communication with my old friends, old bosom friends who have remained bosomy, who provide manifold dimensions to their conversations, not just gossip and trivial shit. The time difference is a wrinkle I haven't yet ironed out, so for most of the days, I pine after friends I miss who aren't even available.

A good friend of mine suggested poetry during times when I'm lacking inspiration, and it's worked. A few years back, I would periodically take down The Treasury of English Poetry, or any collection of T. S. Eliot's, and go to the game room where there was the largest window, so I could sit looking out onto Massachusetts Avenue and read verses that I could never write. There was a calmness in the cadences, and even though I only whispered them, I felt a kinship with the words coming from my mouth, like with prayer (I don't pray), or meditation. There is beauty in feeling lost, and there is value in looking backwards, though I have been taught that those two things are fruitless and futile. It is precisely the ability to feel a wealth of emotions that produces art, and without that sensitivity to all the different facets of life, there would be no great art. Sometimes, it seems like a bad joke to be one who feels so keenly everything that passes through one's life, but other times, it seems like a blessing to be able to glean significant moments out of the pile of mundanities that keep on coming, day after day, month after month, year after year.

With a tome of sad verses (what good poetry is happy?) in my hands, I give myself full permission to indulge in a period of mourning. I mourn the life I left behind in New York: the crisp mornings, the lovely neighborhoods, the people whose distinct flavor and jadedness I miss terribly, the friendships, the apartment, my block, the trees, the parks, the subways, the life that could have been, the supermarkets, the restaurants, the sidewalks, the memories from all the nooks of benches once sat upon, and from all the crannies of places, people, and things that made up who I am. And I am here now, meeting generic people, because I giving away only my generic self. "Hello, how are you? Doing well, enjoying the weather." I mourn the friends whom I've known better elsewhere, but who are here now. The spectre of a better friendship, long dead, gives me hope at the same time it keeps me down. Wishing to resurrect a time in our lives that has already passed us all by is also futile, but the yearning is still in me. The changes that have come over us during the years apart, I am not ready to face theirs, or to reveal my own. This sudden reintroduction leaves me still trying to reconcile that things are different, not just on hiatus. I don't think I was ever done mourning what I had lost, so this second round of mourning is a lot. The poetry helps, though.

My Coney Island Stories

Early in January, I read that the Astroland Rocket has been removed from Coney Island, and that the whole honky tonk area will be revamped into something, well, something completely un-Coney Island. Brooklyn Based calls it a "dismantl[ing] of Brooklyn's storied past" and it brings me back to all the times I've spent creating my own stories on its shore.



This photo was taken in 1988. By the very early 1990s, the graffiti was gone, and the trains were upgraded to the silver style trains that are still running on some lines. I used to take the B train from 20th Avenue in Brooklyn to Grand Street in Manhattan for elementary school. The ride took about 35 minutes door-to-door, and I would sleep with my legs dangling, and with my head on my mom's purse on her lap. The poles on the train were more elaborate then, and there were actual swiveling handles above the seats onto which passengers can hold. One detached from its pole one day and fell on my mother's thigh. The handles didn't look heavy, but the weight of it coupled with gravity gave my mother a nasty bruise. She always told me that if my head had been there, I would have died from the head trauma.

The trains frequently were rerouted on the weekends, so in order to go into Manhattan, or to get home from Manhattan, we would have to go all the way to the last stop, Stillwell Avenue/Coney Island, before we were on our way to the destination. Most of the train would empty out during the summer when all the families exited to go the the beach. Generally, I was more freaked out than not by the station, because the trains always had to release pressure with a huge WHOOSH!, and because the people looked sketchy/dirty/violent/drunk. There were always cops around, though.



My dad had surgery to retrieve a large kidney stone when I was 7. He spent a month recuperating, and we hung out a lot after I came home from school and on the weekends when my mom had to work. We went to the Coney Island beach one weekend, and as we were walking on the sand, he dared me to outrun him. He told me he still felt weak from the surgery, but wanted to prove to himself that he can sprint like a perfectly healthy man. I ran off on the sand, but he soon caught up with me. I stopped, grinning at his victory, when he suddenly keeled over and dropped down to the sand groaning. I thought I had played a part in killing my dad, and started to panic. He then looked up at me and smiled. He looked so proud. I started bawling, of course.

I remember another time at Coney Island when he took me to the aquarium. My dad got up one day and told me he felt really bored, let's do something. We ended up staring at the penguins, breathing in the fishy aquarium smell all afternoon. I translated the info plaques next to all the tanks for him, and we traipsed around the rooms looking at species of fish even Chinese people would not eat willingly. He didn't let me touch the stingrays, though, because he said that the tank water was too dirty. To this day, my one and only stingray-fondle was at the Mote Marine Aquarium in Sarasota, to which Ian took me only a few years ago. I mean, this wasn't just a random day with dad. This was something seemingly casual, but which was actually rife with significance, because it was something I did with him on some off-chance, not knowing that I would retain the memories of that day until I die. Such is the story with my dad. And with Coney Island.

Junior High was really hard for me. I didn't know what sarcasm was, and had the hardest time trying to get my classmates to explain what "alternative" music meant to a girl who's only listened to Canto-pop for the last 11 years of her life. I went from being one the brightest, most outgoing kids in my elementary school to being one of the shyest, most awkward kids in Junior High. In retrospect, it wasn't easy for many people, but when I was mired in it, I only looked for a way to avoid it, or to get through it unscathed.

I played hooky several times, mostly on days when I didn't want to see any of the kids, or deal with any of the teachers. I always did my homework, but shunned "collaborative efforts" with other students, because I was just too unsure of what they thought of me, and because deep down, I knew I liked few of them. It mattered so much that I was liked, that it didn't matter who the person doing the liking was. "Being liked" was an entity unto itself; the doer was meaningless to me; the quality of being popular was the drug. But I didn't ever DO anything to make myself more likeable. I never spoke to the kids who seemed to have it easy, never dressed or acted any differently. I was some strange hybrid of a child who was all egoism and insecurity. It frightens and amuses me now to look back on how myopic I was about everything. If I can name even five people I give two shits about today from Junior High, I would be floored. But back to the hooky: I would take the train all the way into the Bronx, wait at the last stop there, and then ride the train all the way back to Coney Island. No one questioned my presence on the train, even though I was an 11 year-old huddled in the corner reading my book at 10am on a schoolday. I finished Through the Looking Glass on one of those hooky, train-riding days. At Coney Island, I would wander around the platforms for awhile, and then I would board another train, the F most of the time, and ride that to the last stop going uptown, before taking it all the way back to Coney Island again. By the third train switch, it was almost time to go home. I also finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and To Kill a Mockingbird on those hooky days.

In some meta way, I watched "Requiem for a Dream" the year I took off from college, and saw Coney Island through the eyes of all the lurking, addicted souls I tried to ignore when I went there during the light of day. I also saw remnants of my then-boyfriend in those characters. There was that same hopeful, unrealistic look of the addict who didn't know he was in deeper than he wants to believe. The American Dream was quickly disintegrating, and I no longer saw Coney Island as the gaudy, harmless place of my childhood. It became the place where a hit could be taken under the unlit boardwalk, where dealers met with druggies outside Astroland, where the elderly pawned their belongings on Mermaid Avenue to feed their grandchildren's addictions. No good came of it, and from that period, I realized that just love was not enough to hold anything together.

There are stories about Coney Island for a lot of people. It's tough to look into the future and to try to envision that whatever tacky crap Thor Equities thinks up, there will still be that magic of history and faded glory.



Riiight.

The Hektorious One

Yet another month, yet another couple of inches. Here are Hektor's new measurements after only one month of growth:

As of March 1, 2009, four weeks since his last measuring:
- Neck: 16.25" behind the ears (+1.5"), 16.75" on the lower neck above the shoulders (+2.5")
- From nose to tail along his back, 26" (+2.5")
- Withers: 15" (stayed the same)
- Chest circumference, 23" (+1")

We didn't get his weight this time, and were unsuccessful at trying to measure the width of his face, since he tried to eat his measuring apparatus every time we held it up to his face. Suffice to say, he is hefty to hold, and his head is growing nicely, but still considerably slower than the rest of his freakishly large body. Seeing other Frenchies in the neighborhood, seemingly large ones a few months ago are now dwarfed by our monster. Hektor is longer, taller, but not yet thicker than almost all of the other Frenchies in the area. What have we gotten ourselves into?!

That's his sheep pelt bed. I found the pelt, which was a gift from an aunt in New Zealand, in my childhood home, so now it's his makeshift bed around the apartment. He loves it, and sometimes feels so strongly about it that he must eat some of the fuzz. In this photo, he clawed and pulled at the pelt until a ridge formed, and then he used that has his pillow.

Hektor is an experienced walker now. He knows to wait for me at a crosswalk, and rarely tries to drag me anymore. When crazy dogs bark at him and scramble to get at him on their leashes, he just stands there and looks at them, but neither shies away frightened, nor barks back to match their aggressiveness. He seems well-balanced and happy, and he trusts that I will protect him when any dog or person threatens him. We are companions, and little extensions of one another. Ian and I try to leave him alone at least once a day to get him accustomed to abandonment. Aside from a yip now and then, he is fine in a crate.

He's sleeping on the pelt at my feet right now. Soon, we'll go for another little sprint in the new snow, and he'll hopefully be sawing logs again in no time.

Long Walks With Hektor in Cobble Hill

Ce soir, le vent qui frappe à ma porte,
Me parle des amours mortes,
Devant le feu qui s' éteint.
Ce soir, c'est une chanson d' automne,
Dans la maison qui frissonne,
Et je pense aux jours lointains.

Que reste-t-il de nos amours?
Que reste-t-il de ces beaux jours?
Une photo, vieille photo,
De ma jeunesse.

Que reste-t-il des billets doux?
Des mois d' avril, des rendez-vous?
Un souvenir qui me poursuit,
Sans cesse.

Bonheur fané, cheveux au vent,
Baisers volés, rêves mouvants.
Que reste-t-il de tout cela?
Dites-le-moi.

Un petit village, un vieux clocher,
Un paysage si bien caché,
Et dans un nuage le cher visage,
De mon passé.

Les mots, les mots tendres qu'on murmure.
Les caresses, les plus pures.
Les serments au fond des bois.
Les fleurs qu'on retrouve dans un livre,
Dont le parfum vous enivre,
Se sont envolés pourquoi?

One of my favorite activities is to take Hektor out for a long walk around the neighborhood. I walk with an iPod mini in my lefthand jacket pocket, Hektor's leash handle in my righthand pocket, and we stroll from one pretty brownstone-lined street to another, in search for adventure, or just the random lovely scene.

Recently, my iPod has been playing Charles Trenet's Greatest Hits album on repeat. There is a distinctly magical air about walking around this neighborhood with big band French music playing in my ears; the music transforms everything. I find myself ignoring the parked cars and seeing these old streets in soft focus. Anytime now, a horse-drawn carriage will be rolling around the corner, and stopping in front of a gas lamp. The wrought iron balustrades leading up to the homes grow and swirl into a wall of metal vines and flowers. It is fin-de-siècle, only not of this past century, but of the one before that.

I still go through bouts of ennui in the middle of this seemingly unending winter, but there are bright lights on the horizon: my friend and I are starting a letterpress business; I have finally gathered enough courage to indulge myself in penniless, artful pursuits; life without the 9-to-5 is gloriously thrilling, and my soul is fed by this freedom. I never want to go back.

Pigface Killah

As of January 31, 2009, six weeks since his last measuring, these are Hektor's measurements:
- Neck: 14.75" behind the ears (+1.5"), 14" on the lower neck above the shoulders (+1")
- From nose to tail along his back, 23.5" (+0.5")
- Withers: 15" (+2")
- Chest circumference, 22" (+0.5")
- Weight, 23 lbs (+4 pounds)
- Width of face at widest part, 6.5" (+1.75")

Hektor is officially six months old! The little rascal has learned to sit by the door when he needs us to take him out, so we've been doing considerably less mopping, thank goodness. We've also been teaching him "Drop it" to prevent all the mouthy tussling that generally accompanies any game of Fetch. He's still not that good at it, but he loves treats, and so learns quickly.

I find myself missing him when I'm away from him for most of the day. Hektor is always glad to have us come home, and wiggles his butt into our arms. He's a lot less nippy now that his adult teeth are all almost in, so most of the excitement translates into frantic licks at my fingers, knees, and toes. I am followed everywhere I go in the house, and can hardly get a pee in without having him hang out on the bath rug with me. I was forewarned by the breeder that this is the case with Frenchies, but I am happy that he is my constant companion.

His current leash is not a quick release type leash, and so since his head has grown too large for us to remove it, we'll have to cut the leash off soon. His head is finally catching up to the rest of his body, so he doesn't look like a pinhead anymore. I'm also used to his heft, and no longer groan when I hoist him into my arms when I go up and down the stairs. It's amazing that he is the size he is already, since I see other Frenchies in the neighborhood who were considerably larger than Hektor only a couple of months ago, and now, Hektor has outgrown them. He used to crawl through some wrought iron fencing to get to a tree where he had his usual pee spot, but the arches in the fencing are now too small for him to fit his head through, nevermind his body. They grow up so fast ::tear::.

Hektor has his first playdate with a 1.5 year-old Golden Retriever, Sebastien. I hope Hektor plays nice and isn't an asshole. I would think the same if I were bringing my kid to his/her first playdate, because you never want the being whom you are raising to ever be considered an asshole.