The Rice Bowl

Learn To Sing.

This place seems to have run away from me.  I once had a very clear vision of what The Rice Bowl should be; a place for me to write what I write.  The problem quickly became that I was not comfortable sharing what I write.  My writing often feels entirely personal, yet at other times completely foreign.  In both cases, I seem to come face to face with the perpetual fear of sharing it.

It's time to grow up now.

As someone who wants to become a writer (published or not), I need to come to blows with the fact that my writing is there to be read.  A fact that I realised with sudden clarity when I was sitting in my Creative Non Fiction class and I suddenly found my pen-name staring back at me on the roster.  The possessed ink in my pen some how made its way out in the form of a name, foreign to my own, yet familiar to my head.

It's time for me to take my rightful place as writer.

So this is what it will be.  It will be me writing the things that write in a moment on the bus, in the cafeteria, in the middle of class, in the middle of my room, on the park bench in the middle of the city.  This is me, rough and raw.  Ready to meet the uncensored me?

I'm nervous.

Don't Slow Down

There's a box where I keep every letter I've received.  Underneath it is a pile of letters I've written to no one in particular, they've never been sent.  They're waiting, sealed in silence, their secrets kept tight in their adhesive.  The box is covered in words.  Words that speak, to me.  "This is where.Make your mark.Planes, trains, and chasing cars.Tell a captivating story.Beginnings.Blog.Reclaim the girl you left behind.Love notes.Music.Discontent.Visionary.Welcome to the jungle.Lost.Daisy.Smart.Secret Life. When you're smiling.Style.Touch.Trouble.London Calling.Morning Rescue.Never Hide."

Never Hide.

Every word is a part of me.  But "Never Hide", its an affirmation.  It's a reminder.  It's a lesson and a lecture.  One day, maybe I won't need the words on a box to affirm this in me, daily.

Once, I read a letter that I had written, years ago, in complete reckless abandon to what my heart felt could be love.  It was stupid.  It was sweet.  It was beautiful and heartbreaking.  It was like watching the replay of a car crash, where everyone miraculously lives, in slow motion.  It was beautiful, even the destruction.  In retrospect it was.  During, it was...horribly broken.  It was nice to know that I was capable of silly girlish love though.  Maybe I'll find that again?

Tomorrow I turn a year older.  Magically.  Like someone snapped their fingers and it just happened.  I'm always filled with thoughts about life, plans, loves.  This year, I think about my parents.  My two best friends.  The two people who have been there to stand up for me.  The two people that dealt with my tears over falling off a bicycle, a broken teddy bear, mean girls in the neighbourhood, a jealous boy, impossible loads of homework and countless cups of coffee, broken hearts, and leaving home.  Where would I be without them?  I would definitely not be me.  I got lucky.  I feel like I won the DNA lottery with my parents.  My only struggle this year is finding any words at all (are there even any?) to express my gratitude to them for being, not only the best role models, but the closest friends I could ever ask for.

A year older.  365 days older.  7665 days of life (give or take).  Wow.  They've been good ones.  Ones filled with more thoughts than you can imagine.  Ones filled with more insane experiences, good and bad, than most receive in a lifetime.  I wouldn't trade any of it for the world.  I'm busting open the champagne and celebrating every triumph, trial, and failure with a smile and a toast.  But most of all, I'm celebrating with a hope, a wish, a dream, that one day, I might figure out a little more about me, or someone else might and be able to share it with me.

If I've learned anything in this life, it is this: I am not my own.

So now, more than ever, as I face another year, the words are clear.  Never hide.  Never hide, because that's how you miss things.  Things that define who you are.  People who help you find what defines you.

21, you're going to be a good year.

I Know Nothing Stays the Same...

I have a friend.  He happens to be my best friend in the whole world.  I've known him since...well, I don't remember.  Every memory I seem to have, somehow, contains him.

He sat in forts made out of bed sheets and dining room chairs with me while we read Green Eggs and Ham to each other.  He knew where all my secret hiding places were, and of course, he was the prefered friend to all my imaginary ones.  We sat in a garage together (which was really a beach) on a towel and under an umbrella while the rain poured outside.  We dove under the covers with a flash light and read Harry Potter books while silently gasping at all the right moments.  He was the first person I told when I fell in love with the boy who lived down the street.  He contains every thing that seems to compile what it is to be me.

Sure, he's had some rough times.  The leather that once covered his nose has long rubbed away.  His eyes are almost always covered by his matted fur.  The holes in his paws seem to get bigger by the day, and, well, I'm the only one that can tell that he has a smile, still.  He's been thrown in suitcases and backpacks and dragged across the globe.  His passport is as thick as mine.  He's soaked up more tears than anyone can ever know and he's battled the washing machine many times.

Horrifyingly, his head fell off one night while I ran to my parent's bed, sick with a fever.  I climbed into the bed only to discover my best friend's body was missing.  Distraught, I ran out of the room into the corridor where his lifeless corpse lay, headless.  My mum promised to sew him back together, but I think it took a good hour before I had finally cried myself to sleep, needing my friend to comfort me when I was ill.  After that day his head seemed to roll off every now and then and the hole in his neck seemed permanent until we had him professionally reconstructed.

3 years ago, an airport security guard pulled him from my arms and violated him in front of me.  Tears stung my eyes and when the disgruntled guard was finally satisfied that he wasn't some drug smuggling hippie, the guard received a few angry words from me notifying him that if I had been 10 years younger he'd have had a huge problem on his hands.  The ordeal was scarring for the both of us, to say the least.

As a birthday draws nearer, for both of us, he's the piece of home that I cling to.  He's every memory that I know of and I cannot help but think, he'll still be there for whatever is to come.  He'll still be the one that I confess my secrets to, sitting in my room, waiting for me to sit on my bed with him.  I'm sure I have more tears for him to dry, we have more adventures to share, and more secrets to tell.

I don't ever want to be a grown up.

Took the time to write down all my thoughts.

Yesterday, I pulled a college student day.  I've been known to be a ridiculous procrastinator on so many things in my life--school work very much included.  However, since moving to Portland and starting fresh, I've been very focused and really good with my school work, until recently.

I hate research papers.  Let me explain this.  I hate the research part of research papers.  I have so many high school flashbacks of breaking down in tears in front of the computer at 3 am because the Great Firewall of China had struck once again.  To this day, I have nightmares about my internet connection shutting down because of the wrong phrase typed into Google all for a school assignment.  Yes, yes, I know that I am free of those restrictions, but I still hate it.  Research papers tend to leave me with the overwhelming feeling that I could have written so much more because there was so much more information I could have used but never got around to.  Research papers are daunting.

Don't get me wrong, I can write an amazing research paper, and given the right topic, I can somewhat enjoy the topic.  But there's a reason I decided to drop the science major, and there it is.

My writing class was assigned a research paper a few weeks ago.  The catch?  The topic we chose had to be a current international issue...and we were allowed only ONE internet source.  Sure, I understand the stipulations of this.  This is a lesson in using resources out side of Wikipedia and that third grade web report on George Washington.  But, of course, I chose a topic I wouldn't be bored to tears with and had no chance of being duplicated by any of my fellow classmates.  I chose to write on the effects that blogging has had on the media industry.  Of course, this topic limited my offline resources severely, and I knew this.

So, I avoided it like the plague.

While avoiding this paper like SARS, I contracted my own illness.  Irony, awesome.  I spent the last couple weeks running into the doctors with my mystery illness and the rest was spent paying more attention to what was wrong with me, rather than what was due.  On Monday my mystery pain was finally diagnosed, and the sudden realization that I hadn't even looked at this paper let alone started it hit me and I scrambled to find my original proposal for the essay.

In a move filled with awesomeness, I entered the library 7 hours before the research paper was due, emptied the bookshelves dealing with blogging, the internet, ethics, and journalistic media forms.  And there I sat for 7 hours, reading, highlighting, copying, typing, sourcing, and contmeplating taking a nap on floor.  But I got it done without completely wanting to kill myself or shred the books infront of me.  Success.

But I noticed something during my time spent scouring the bookshelves and flipping through pages; I miss libraries.  I've always found comfort in sitting between the stacks and flipping through some volume from the past.  I love the smell of books.  I love the delapedated covers from the 60's that stare back at me.  I love the idea that someone else read the same book I posess and that they were standing in the same place I am when taking it from the shelf.  I love searching for a book from the call number on the spine; it's like detective's work.

When I was at school in Hawaii, the library was massive, but it was also...unwelcoming.  The library was being remodled while was at school and it was never truly and completely peaceful.  The books were being placed in boxes and everything in the place felt incomplete and missing.  Not to mention, the school was small and when you live on campus, you know everyone.  People constantly came over to talk to you in the library, to say 'hi'.  It wasn't a place where you could lose yourself.  You couldn't sit in the stacks because someone would come by for a chat or the spines of the books you ran your fingers over were screaming for their missing counterparts, burried somewhere within a box, remembered only by their barcodes.  The windows were tinted, the flouresent lights were blinding and the air conditioner was set far too low.  The place was cold and dark, and not in a welcoming way.

When I sat in the confines of the Rock Creek library yesterday, I wan't affected by the atmosphere in a negative way.  I fell in love with the library's book collection last term when I found myself reading Dostoyevsky infront of Shakespeare (there's something brilliantly beautiful about that moment).  The library is open and bright, inviting, warm, beautiful.  The frustrated kids frantically flipping through their books, don't look that frustrated after all.  The library has couches, and ample outlets for laptops in the desks.

But here's my favourite part.  Lamps.  The library contains personal lamps at every desk, rather than depending upon the harsh, loud light of flourecents.  They're primary light source are the 180 degree floor to ceiling windows and sky lights.  Beautiful.

Plus, it helps that I don't know anyone on campus well enough to hold a conversation with.

I think I've found my new inspirational sanctuary, and that makes me giddy inside

I Love This City Tonight.

There's a city that I'm in love with.  There's a city that I long to be.  Yes, I realize that the logical conclusion for me to jump to is to pack up and move there, but this time, I'm trying to do this right.

Years ago, as a teenager, I fell in love with Seattle.  I didn't fall in love with the real Seattle, but I fell in love with its tourist traps and atmosphere.  In October, I had the opportunity to go back again, and see Seattle on my own with a cheesy map from a hotel lobby, a camera, and a pocket full of change.  Sure, I still did the tourist things, but this time I did it as an adult.  I went there to figure out what the city was all about.  I walked down the street with the rest of the early morning Seattle-ites grabbing coffee and bustling away.  I meandered through the Market and watched it come to life.  I picked up freshly baked goods from all over the world and I bought an apple, like the locals do.  When it rained, I embraced it.  I sat in a cafe and wrote in the back of a novel as I listened in on real conversations.

A couple weeks ago, I went back to this city that has my heart.  With an extra day off from school I bought a train ticket and wandered North to see a friend. 

If you're a Portlander, I highly recommend going up to Union Station and taking the train up along the Sound.  Along with it being an affordable option, the is ride comfortable and beautiful.  Everything from the 1920's feel of the train stations to the sights along the way; the ride is unforgettable, no matter what season you're in.  The ride is around 3 hours, depending on the time of day, and the trains are almost never full.  Plus, Seattle is a very walker friendly town, so get your shoes on and wander.  Take a timeless classic to read and dream away as you cross the state line.

Having grown up in Southern China, the fam and I constantly made trips to Hong Kong which sparked my love for the ferry boats that delivered thousands of people across the harbour every day.  While in Seattle we decided to take a trip on the ferry to Bainbridge Island.  I do not recommend going to this island, unless you happen to love frightening Stepford-esque towns run by yuppies.  Why did we go?  Because it was a short ferry ride over, and all we really wanted to do was ride the ferry.  But for all the fright that we endured while on the island (and the liquor run that we made to keep us alive) the ferry was well worth it.  Take the ferry at sunset if you can.  You may fall in love with the city like I have.

After our intrepid journey across the Sound and back (thankfully), we made our way to Kent to see the Seattle Thunderbirds face-off the Everett Silvertips.  With a victory for the T-Birds, a good time was had by all.  The crowd was electric at this rivalry game and it was an exciting experience for GracefullyPunk's first hockey game.  As for me, I love hockey and the smell of the rink always soothes my soul.  The T-Birds will be down in Portland to face off the Winterhawks on 21st February; a game I will make time to see.

The next morning, we made our way down to the market for some fish and chips and other delights.  Meandering our way around the block and through the alleyways we found a bevy of amazing locations.  We wandered through a bookstore, completely dedicated to travel books.  An amazing store that was very hard to resist shopping in.  We landed at Piroshky Piroshky, a Russian bakery and one of my favourites, as well as a Chinese Mee Sum stand where I cured my homesickness with a Char Sui Bao.  We eventually found ourselves at Jack's Fish Spot, where we found some of the best fish and chips in town.  With the boys chopping potatoes and frying them to order in the back, I quickly fell in love with them, only to want to jump over the bar to propose marriage to one of them upon tasting how perfectly salted the chips were.  Best chips in the United States, hands down.

With all of this, I made it to my train, barely, and I left the city with a piece of my heart once again.  When I finally reached Portland, I couldn't help wishing I could turn around and go back again.  So for now, I miss this city I love, and I can't wait until we meet again.

As I Search For The Resolution

I'd post resolutions for the new year, but I feel like that would be so cliché and I'm not feeling very cliché at the moment.  So, thus far, 8 days into 2009, nine months away from a ridiculous birthday, I feel like this is going to be a year full of good intentions and sentimental feelings.  All signs have pointed this way.

When I left home on the 2nd, it was one of the hardest partings I've had to endure.  It definitely made top three.  It's going to be a long while before I see the parents again, and that will never get easy for me.  Being in Oregon makes me miss my parents and brother, but not in Oregon.  It's a place that we all fought hard to make the most of, watched it all fall apart, and then made plans to become something more.  Being here reminds me of that.  But, in a good way, it's making me make plans to do more, something that both my parents and I are excited about.

In essence, the only goal I have really set out for 2009 is to lose weight (duh and cliché).  But all the goals and 'resolutions' I have are not worthy simply for 2009.  They're things that I need to make happen, so I'm not marring them as NYRs and watching them dissipate into good intentions by March.

I keep finding myself in an awkward grey area of life.  With friends finding relationships, engagements, careers, graduations, marriages, houses; I'm starting to feel like I'm lagging behind.  No, it's not that I want every single one of those things, but there are things that I want to see myself accomplish before all those things land at my feet.  I need to do so much more before I find a place to put my roots down.  I'm learning about the things I love.  I'm discovering poetry and falling in love with Robert Frost and Robert Browning, again.  I'm figuring out who Elenor Rigby is and I'm letting her go away from me, because I've kept her in my mind for far too long.  I'm learning about books and the voices that I love.  I'm discovering the genius of Tolstoy and following the tragic life of Anna Karenina.  I've rediscovered my French and how much I really love speaking the language of romance.  The part of me that has wanted to wander the streets of Paris on cool Autumn days has re-awoken.

So, I don't have any resolutions.  Good intentions and sentiments for this year.  But I have plans for more than a year.  I'm making plans for more than this year.  I'm finding ways to see those plans out into something bigger than I could have expected.  I think that that's more than enough to be excited for the next year...plus four.