some things never get old

well (paris)

Tumblr actually annoys the crap out of me, so that transition didn't work out so well. I have to get on this whole WordPress thing...

I wrote this over the summer, but never posted it. What better time than now?

~*~

"Tout d'un coup," as the French would say, fall has arrived in Paris. The skies are dredged in cloud, the sporadic showers forcing the street performers to nudge their electronic backup musicians under the cover of their case to protect wires and bundle up in nearby shelter until the rain comes to pass. If you thought the French looked grumpy before, you'd notice even more smiles have disappeared as the city resigns itself to another gray winter.

Though the whiff of piss is more than occasional in Paris (the rains replacing it with scents of drains), it still maintains all the illusions of elegance. Unlike Madrid--where the city's underbelly of dissatisfied youth is much more visible--the middle of Paris sees little roughness around its edges. Apart from the skateboarders in La Place de la Republique and the occasionally eccentrically dressed group of young people, you'd hardly notice anything at all. I had been hoping to catch a glimpse of parcour or at least a sign of the burgeoning French hip-hop culture, but apart from the occasional ACAB (all cops are bastards) scrawled here and there, it seems that all is well. The people on the street are getting money put in their cups. It would likely require a trip to the suburbs or a targeted journey to see more of the underside of things--perhaps partially attributable to Paris' enormous size and spread.

I wrote very little about this last trip to India--mostly because my companion, as a first-timer, wrote enough for the both of us. (I did write some travel advice which will be going in a new travel blog we're making, but that's for another time.) In stark contrast to the neat, buttoned-down dispositions of Paris and London, nothing is hidden from you in India--this is one reason I am fond of India, and another reason why so many people leave hating it. Seeing the Parisians' lips curl at the distasteful sight of the Roma family that lives on a mattress on my street corner makes me laugh a little inside and also makes me sad, in the same way that I get angry when I think about how the homeless are always shooed out of sight in the States. We are always so hurried to brush the evidence of our social problems under the rug...but if we can't see them, there will be little or no impetus to change them.

At any rate, it's for this reason that I'm not sure I could ever live at length in Paris or London. While both are beautiful cities, full of wonderful tastes and experiences, they lack a little of the chaos that I've come to need and love.

While I'm here, though, I'm going to eat all the financiers that I can fit in my stomach!

some thoughts

I have these moments sometimes--when I'm in the middle of doing something silly or menial--like doing the dishes, watching Samurai Jack, or systematically demolishing a pint of non-dairy ice cream--that I remember that I am alive, breathing, and could die at any moment.

Does that ever happen to you?

It's like a lot of the time I am lulled into a sort of complacency and am occasionally shaken back awake.

I've probably talked about this before (this blog is full of too much of my blathering to check and make sure right now, so I'll just pretend I haven't) but I thought about it again today.

It's amazing that anyone really gets through life at all--because when I have those moments, they sort of knock the wind out of me. You wonder how anyone makes plans for the future when there's those soul-crushing moments of realizing you exist, and this is it. This is your life.

And then I flip through something like this, and wonder how anyone manages to pick themselves up after something like this happens to them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, though I often disparage the human race, we should get points just for getting through the day. It's easy to forget that everyone around you has a story, that everyone is fighting some kind of invisible war.

And that's just an individual thing. I mean, forget worrying about the earth potentially being destroyed or sea lions dying or women being oppressed or the heinous systemic racism that is rampant in our society. It's hard enough to just get up in the morning and go about the business of living your freaking life.

So give yourself a pat on the back for trying to wade through life's sea of obstacles.

Hooray!

this song...

and now what

What kind of friend am I? I mean first, I abandon you. And then I crawl back and apologize a full six months later? Apparently not a good one. You have terrible taste.



But seriously, I blinked and now I'm a month away from being 21. The age where you're supposed to get loaded and make mistakes and wake up with your underpants on your head on the Campus Loop shuttle going round, and round, and round. Except that I've done a rather unfortunate amount of things similar to that over the years, so I may end up chauffeuring some of my still-boozing friends around for them to drink. Such is the absurdity my life has become.





So what has happened to me as of late? Well first, I'm an anthropology major. What that really means is that I've switched to another thing that would typically have me living in a cardboard box to the same extent as my previous major, except for the fact that I actually like this one.

Also, except for the living in a cardboard box part.



Yup, this girl already has a fallback job lined up for when she graduates. In this bleak economic time, you should indeed be impressed. One that pays above the poverty line, and where I get to work in a shiny new building! It's all really quite exciting...except for the fact that I haven't said yes for sure yet.

This is for several reasons. One is that I have been given advice from numerous dependable people telling me not to sell myself short. Some think that my subconscious forethought to work my butt off through high school and college may actually be able to put me in a better job, with better pay.

The second reason is because well...what if I want to do something else? What if I want to work in a restaurant for a little while or study the contraband and errorist movements in Argentina or make tiny cute shit to sell on Etsy like "teeny the teacup"?

teeny comes in many other colors and is my new best friend.

The final reason is because of my boyfriend. There's that whole living together, it-depends-on-what-he's-doing thing.

Which is...well, scary.




Because even in those moments where you feel totally at ease, or absurd, or carefree (incidentally, right now he's sitting on the floor in his underwear eating tri-tip and making faces at me) you realize that being committed is scary.

Facing the possibility that you may in fact be in the room with the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.




I mean...am I ready? I ask myself this all the time. I don't have a job, I don't know what the hell I'm really going to do with my life. I fumble my way through every day and I have a ton of responsibility already...but somehow I don't feel ready for a lot of this stuff. I mean fuck, I'm twenty years old. At least for another 24 days, I'm not even old enough to buy my own freaking bottle of wine. Yet worrying about another entire person?! I don't even have my shit together yet.

But then sometimes, there are moments--like right now, when he's sitting on the floor, dirty and sweaty in his underwear, shoving down tri-tip and chugging my apple juice--when you just kind
of know. If it works, it works, right?





I may not be ready for a lot of things. But I think...I think I'm ready for this.

In four days, I will be here.

It's surreal, no?

100 things

I have challenged myself to whittle down my worldly possessions to a grand total of 100 things.

The first thing that most people ask is why. My answer has multiple parts.

If you’re anything like me, you haven’t thrown anything out since you were 16. This includes clothes; when I wear a grand total of about 25 things on a regular basis, it seems silly to have a whole closet full of clothes. Clothes that don’t fit, clothes with holes, clothes that have too many embarrassing memories of awkward years tied to them for me to ever wear again. But you still have them, and cling to them with a strange nostalgia that doesn’t make sense when you think about how awful high school was in the first place.

Also, if you’re anything like me, you have 10 old cellphones that you kept in case you lost your current one (which I do frequently). You also have a whole shelf full of random knick knacks, and find that people give you little cute glitzy boxes as gifts because, well…you need a place to put all that stuff. You have 25 scarves, 10 pairs of shoes with holes in the bottom, and sweatpants from water polo that are three sizes too big but that you still keep in case you ever manage to somehow catastrophically lose your other four pairs of sweatpants that actually fit.

And finally, if you’re anything like me, you haven’t stayed in one place for a period of longer than two years since you were seven years old. Most of the time, the accessory stuff just vanished, or got left behind. But then you got to college, and you finally had a semi-permanent home, and maybe you felt a little more settled. The problem is, your new home is about 1/4th the size of your fairly large room you had in your house in Los Angeles and you, once again, haven’t thrown anything out in eight years.

Too much stuff.

I know you’re out there, you people-like-me. We are many, and we hoard in a socially acceptable way. We cling to our stuff because we can’t or don’t want to cling to other things, or we like to think of our hoarding as a sort of virtue—why should I throw it away when I might someday in the far future need it? We cling because we have nothing else to cling to, or because in this time of huge transition and upheaval in our lives, our stuff is our last clinging to home, or to something we are slowly gravitating away from.

But no, my friends. Clinging is not the answer. Because while you might wear those sweatpants once a year, there are people who don’t necessarily have warm pants to wear at all. In this time of recession, people are clinging to their stuff even more—when your savings account is no longer growing we seem to gravitate towards other things to latch onto and obsess over as measures of our wealth, or what we “have”. When I started to slowly chip away and donate things a few weeks ago, the profuse thanks that I got for what I had given, because “hardly anyone has been donating lately,” made me realize how ridiculous my mentality had been. Not only are we constantly forgetting what we have, and how lucky we are for that—we are also constantly forgetting what other people need, and that sometimes their dire situations trump our need to clutch onto those fraying jeans.

Not enough room.

This is much more than a one-week endeavor. I have been working on donating a large donation of my things for the past three weeks. I have already donated more than half of my clothes. I have begun to list my possessions. Everything. From my skis to my French press, from my knife block to my fish food.

But what do you count? For my first stage, I don’t think it makes sense to count every single thing. Do I count my fish, or my cats? I’d like to think of them as friends rather than material possessions. When I count my fish tank, do I count my filter and heater and gravel and decorations, or do I count them as one thing? You can get pretty specific with this stuff if you want. Rather than end up with clothes and a fish tank, I decided to count them as one thing. I think I am also, rather than eliminating most of my clothes, attempt for reasonable numbers in each category. I might even need to count my chargers along with the things they charge. If I counted the individual photographs and posters I own I would already be out of luck. And keeping track of the things that I’ve left at either parent’s house is difficult.

I will do my best to document my parting with these worldly possessions that I have chosen to give up, in the hope that it will be freeing and insightful. Stay tuned.

"Whore frost?"

The snow here is perfect.

Now don't take this casually. I've been around the block. I've experienced snow from a tiny village in the Czech Republic to the slopes in Colorado. I am always on a quest for the perfect snow, the perfect snowball. On my vacation this past winter my significant other made the mistake of getting into a snowball fight with me.

Big mistake. I usually like to be modest, but...I kind of kicked his ass.

Never get in a snowball fight with a Canadian.

But the snow here...it doesn't turn into ugly brown mush when it hits the ground. It has to be at least 5 degrees before it melts. It forms huge fluffy banks and dusts every surface. It's just the right consistency to be able to pick up a handful and let it cascade out of your mitted hand, but if you apply just the tiniest pressure, it packs perfectly into a perfect winter weapon. With the tiniest touch of wind, it sticks to all the trees, coating them in a hoarfrost that makes me want to walk up to it and touch it, because it looks so perfectly winter-wonderland-y that I feel like I'm in Santa's Village. It's like god's very own powder sugar that was sifted over the whole world.

I miss a lot of things about home, but the snow in particularly gives me pangs of happiness when I scoop up a clean patch in my mitts, scrunch it up and pop it onto my tongue, or when I make three-pronged footprints with my boots.

Yes, when I was little I did like to pretend I was a dinosaur.

Rawr.

(pictures are not mine. not any of them.)

don't you miss yourself?

Wait...it's March?

I'm not even going to try to catch up on everything that has happened in the past few months. From getting kittens to having a stable source of love in my life (I know, that's different...), from savoring Santa Fe to planning for Costa Rica, from being unbelievably busy and having my world crash around my ears to sleeping twelve hours a day, I have been there and back again over the past few months--and things haven't really slowed.




I thought for a while about making a new blog, or changing the name of this one. A long time, actually. I think that's partly something that was slowing me from actually writing anything. I feel like I've opened such a new chapter in my life and that I've changed so much--I mean, I haven't really posted regularly in almost a year! I felt like the renewal of my creative expulsion of whatever my thoughts might be warranted a new...something.




But then one day I really thought about it, and I smacked my head, because I had forgotten what this blog was really all about--and it would sort of defeat the purpose of everything I've ever said about this blog and written in here to turn away now.

So here we go.



I'm actually going to start by going back to something that I didn't really think I would come back to, though in retrospect that was silly.

Yup, the monastery.

It's kind of like Alex said at our last group gathering...it doesn't hit you right away. Sometimes it takes days, weeks, months for the magnitude of everything you've learned to sink in. And it never affects you the way you think it will.

For me, it hasn't been a profound change. I haven't been meditating daily like some of my counterparts. I haven't particularly been converted, and my life is just as hectic as it has always been. But somehow, I find myself insulated. Some of my previous frittered frazzled hair splitting has somehow disappeared. I don't know what it is, and I don't know why, but I find myself...at peace.





If I could explain it, if I could teach it, I would. I would probably be a millionaire. But it's this mysterious change that has somehow permeated my being, inveitably for the better. I often now find my thoughts wandering back to those sticky hot rainy days, my hole-y yellow poncho fraying, stretching to the sky on the beaten track in the dawn, tucking into doors for cool air conditioning, padding back and forth on the cool polished floors of the hall. It feels like something that looks over my shoulder, tapping me every once in a while, reminding me. I have not forgotten.




But despite having remembered many things, there are some things that I had forgotten. There are many things, like taking a trip to your childhood home, or taking off every photo and poster from your wall and carefully stowing them into a trunk, that sort of bring you face to face with exactly who you are, who you were, and who you thought you were going to be.





The blurred faces, the faint colors, the hints, the repeated images, the whispers and shadows. The memories.




I remember having a discussion about bleeding colors, and I am afraid that a little bit of that happened again. It's funny how quickly some things change, and how some others just don't. Before I knew it, that little bit of change became bigger than I thought it could get. I finally looked back around to realize it.

People always fear change as though it's some big monster that's going to pounce on you when you're not looking. But it's not. You have to be looking away for a long, long time for change to sneak up on you. Because it's not out of your hands.

Change is what happens when you make those little tiny choices that you think have no consequences every single day. When you take a shift over studying. When you hang out with a friend or decide to stay in. When you drive to the grocery store. When you submit an application. Each of those little, seemingly inconsequential things can change things forever--but not all at once. Change is a sneaky little bastard. Before you know it he's seeped under your door and your life is not the same. All those little things have compounded into you looking into the mirror and seeing someone a few wrinkles different. Add that up over time and well...that's life.

The good thing is that the wheel is entirely (well, maybe not entirely, but largely) in your hands. And if you catch the wheel before you go too far down a road, changing, or turning away from change is easy. But...

.

Just so you know...

I thought that I should tell you, since many of you have probably been looking like this at my vanishing...







I'm not dead.


Just uninspired. But that, as of late, is changing. Things are a-brewin.










...just in case you were wondering.









So don't worry. This is my metaphorical pat on the face...or whatever.

tpe

I am armed with a can of coffee (the vending machine variety—expecting it to be horrible, I am surprised to find that it’s rather good) and an apple at one of the café’s tables. I have sat in the back in the hopes that they will not notice my outside food and drink. I have a little over three hours. The check-in counter isn’t even open yet.

It’s funny how when you’re going through a life-changing experience, you don’t realize it. It takes a little while for the magnitude of our experiences to sink in—our classic human inability, or delay, in recognizing the good stuff.



My time in the meditation hall was much needed. It was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t think words can really encapsulate what happened, and I’m still not sure how far-reaching the changes in my life are going to be. Maybe some time soon I’ll be able to actually put it in words, but for now it’s something that I’m still processing.

The cultural tour, too, is sort of beyond words—I think in this case I’ll leave it up to the photographs to speak for me.


As the van pulled away from the monastery, I realized that I’d left a little piece of me there. That place saw me through a lot. The Chan hall, in particular, knows me quite well. And I know that I will always feel some-kind-of-at-home if I ever go back.

But even when you leave pieces of heart everywhere you go, you have to realize that it’s not so simple as you losing bits of yourself. When I moved a lot as a kid, I used to think that way. But now I’ve come to realize that when you leave a piece of your heart behind, you also take something back from that place. We may feel that when we have to say goodbye, we are emptying our cups—which may be true. But we forget that, when we open our hearts to the places we go, we in turn we take something new with us, a little piece of that place, faint memories that float like ghosts behind us, a few drops of fresh tea.



It’s an odd little exchange, but when you realize it, things are actually pretty fair. And in return for that sudden ache, that being wrenched away from something, you gradually build a wall of safety around that place in your heart—it provides a sanctuary, it opens your eyes, it keeps you warm on a cold day.


When you think about it that way, goodbye isn’t really so bad.

And if you’re really, really lucky, it may just be a “see you soon.”

a problem

A large part of the problem (some day I may say blessing, for now I say problem) with meditation is that it is very confrontational.

You wouldn’t think so, what with all the silence and relaxation that goes into it and everything. But the simple act of sitting, focusing, and emptying your mind actually allows it to unearth a lot of thoughts, memories, and truths that you may not want to see.

Because when you relax your mind, clear it, all of the things you may have been suppressing, been too busy to process, been too busy to think about, been trying to forget, been trying to control—they come flooding to the surface.

You can’t run. You can’t hide. It’s just you and your mind. Your darkest thoughts and secrets are illuminated in almost a harsh light.

For people who, like me, sometimes insist on being in control—perhaps at the expense of the health of their general state of being—and who are currently quite troubled, meditation is at first difficult. The past few days have been something of an emotional rollercoaster. The more we practice meditation, the more I am confronted with the big issues in my life, my darkest corners, my flaws.

Not that it is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s very good for me, and until now I don’t think I fully realized how badly I needed this. But these first few days have made me realize that seven days without talking, with nothing but eating, sleeping, and my thoughts—it’s going to change and challenge me more than I can imagine. Even now, I am reeling with hurt and emotion that I had suppressed and hidden for so long that I had forgotten it was even there. All the things that I have buried are going to surface.



I’m scared. Never before in my life have I felt this vulnerable.

But perhaps in weakness, we are strong. And the night is darkest before the dawn. Things have to get bad before they can get better. I have to hope that after these seven days, I will have been to hell and back, will have questioned who I am, will have shattered all of my misconceptions and illusions and will have found some answers. Or, if not, at least begin to patch up some of the cracks. Hopefully I won’t lose my mind.

My tea has steeped too long. It’s bitter and cold.

I am emptying my cup.

day five

It seems I am finally over my jetlag, which has put me in a much better mood than I was in yesterday. Even in spite of the laundry mishap this morning—I took someone else’s uniform from the laundry room and had to rush back up and quickly strip and change, almost making me late for lineup—I have escaped this morning relatively unscathed. I think the adjustment is approaching its end, thank goodness. My body’s shock at the heat and humidity is subsiding, and my skin is still in panic mode but seems to be slowly calming down. My hair is loving the moisture and the break from the hot clutches of my straightener.

The dining hall experience at breakfast gets funnier every day. Two days ago, out first breakfast in the dining hall as opposed to the small separate room we’d had it in before, we were served faux cheeseburgers. The serving staff have made an exception for us and we are eating a “western style” menu. It is cute, and rather hilarious, to see what their interpretation of American food is.



Yesterday, we had breaded rings that tasted something like calamari and hot chocolate (in which they put cheerios that we had to fish out with our chopsticks, much to our amusement). And today, we had miniature faux hot dogs and French fries. I said nothing and ate diligently—I have no problem with French fries at 6:30 in the morning, though the very picky, selfish, bratty girl who I have come to hate sitting on my left did and gave me an incredulous look when I asked for more. Perhaps I shouldn’t speak ill of my breakfast buddy, but I think in this case it’s deserved. I caught her shocked look and shrugged.

Whatever, snotty Yale girl. You are no friend of mine if you turn down French fries.

I still can’t get over how much I love the rain here. It’s rain like I have never seen rain before. I think my positive association with it comes from the fact that it drives away the heat in a way that nothing else can. The noise is so calming, relaxing.

I think I take so much solace in the noise, whether ambient or melodic, because I haven’t listened to music since I’ve been here. I think of it the way Emma does in Bride Wars. (Yes, I am quoting it. Get over it. It’s a great movie.) “Running with iPods is for people who can’t stand running with their own thoughts.” As someone who can safely say that music is my life, I am surprised to find that I can so easily detach myself from it. My ears now, however, are drawn to other things. The breakfast chant, probably the most beautiful and melodic of the chants that we do, frequently gets stuck in my head.


Being here makes me desperately want to learn Chinese. It’s such an immensely complex language, more than I had ever imagined or appreciated before. For me, languages are like puzzles, and I crave to unlock the meaning of each word, each sound, each piece. Putting them together paints such a beautiful picture, and it is only accessible to those who possess that key to understanding them. Chinese intrigues me even more than most. The slight differences of stroke, the tiny inflections of pronunciation that can completely change the meaning of a word. It is a mysterious language, and even the monastics we meet here who translate sutras and consider themselves experts in Chinese often come to find that even their knowledge falls short.

The more you learn, the more you realize you don't really know anything at all.