how now brown cow!

1.

Ok, I lied.

The new website is not up yet. This entry, my friends, is the final one.

I bought a domain name but then there was this thing called hosting and then something-sql got in the way, and then there was a lot of downloading and uploading and zipping and unzipping of files, and then nothing happened. Forgive me while I tussle through the tech-speak. Things will be up and running eventually.

In the meantime, I wanted to tie up the loose ends: namely, why now? Why is Sharon (finally) no longer in Mongolia?

Sharon In Mongolia was born out of a very difficult time in my life, when I was sadder and dumber than I’d ever been. Everything was couched in terms of escapism. I was dodging my small failures and impending adulthood/responsibilities. I was afraid of everyone and everything and I couldn’t get a handle on the fear.

Mongolia, for me, was/is a state of mind – a slice of structured avoidance, a fond set of memories, a time when I took a small break from feeling very lame and shaky. I needed something and I didn't know what it was, so I escaped to Mongolia. Now, I’m finally leaving because I don’t need it anymore.

What I've learned: there is a distinct difference between eschewing reality for adventure vs. creating adventure out of your reality.

So who is this person that Sharon has become? Right now, she’s not the prettiest sight. Right now, I’m eating refried beans straight out of the can and sporting a bib of pink sunburn on my chest, two testaments to the person I have become in the last handful of years: somewhat lazy and vaguely outdoorsy and living the bachelorette lifestyle that lends itself to a consistently-empty fridge (although I do have a nice selection of expired condiments). Maybe I’ve always been this person. Some part of me will never quite master the art of growing up and I am glad for it.

I'm ready to choose my own adventure.

The only certainty in life is its uncertainty.

2.

And now, to tie up those matters of the heart.

I've been shockingly candid here, maybe too forthcoming. What's done is done. I’ve written about heartbreak. I've been in deep funks. I've been pretty angry. I've eluded to it on more than one occasion. I’ve even sworn it off a few times (here and here). Admittedly, the two aforementioned entries were as much about catharsis and holding myself accountable and giving myself a stern, public ultimatum as it was about provoking a reaction, any reaction, which is something that (most) women are prone to do.

You listen to enough concerned words and women’s lib and self-doubt that you start to feel sideways. You half-hear many things. Your thoughts grow thoughts. You feel, at times, terrible and embarrassed and terribly embarrassed.

You go about your business.

The takeaway is that, sometimes, even after all of the time and personal growth and self-flagellation, you continue to love someone, in your small, weird, nonsensical way, without rhyme or reason or rationale. And, finally, without expectation and self-judgment.

In time, I’ve stopped criticizing myself for it. There’s nothing to defend against. I wish him good things. Maybe we will keep in touch. Maybe this is the sunk cost of love and loving someone.

I’m trying to forge my own path. I've refocused. I've got little-sized and medium-sized and big-sized fish to fry.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

catch you on the flip side!

I'm moving, literally and figuratively.

Contact me for the new blog address. Thank you to all!

celebrity sighting

I stood in front of RICK STEVES in the SFO airport security line! No one else seemed to notice! I stared, openly and awkwardly, until he was directed to a separate, private security line.

In real life, he's fairly tall and thinner than he appears in his videos. His voice sounds about the same.

Neat!

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends

I made a new goal today while I paused to watch a bum. He was placing neat little stacks of toast on a hot Foreman grill. He did this after the sun had set, right out on the harbor, indifferent to the tourists walking past. I was impressed and faintly hungry.

The new goal is to write every day, even if I touch on only mundane and uninspired subjects and thoughts. My novel is languishing in Nowheresville. I know what's wrong with it. The problem is that I adore the quirky situations and odd descriptions but there's no momentum. Let's get moving.

Today's event/thought/realization: sometimes, you can rely on the eager kindness of strangers, even if it is unintentional on their part. I say this because I felt startled and (secretly) comforted by their proffered advice and simple gestures. Now I have direction and a backup plan.

It's such a small, cliched thing to know that we're all in it together. It helps.

"The act of possession is to begin the process of its loss" [translated]

Generally speaking, I’m tight-lipped about work. I’m not about to pull a dooce, so to speak.

I will say: I’m lucky to have a job that is, for the most part, deeply satisfying and amazing and fulfilling.

The disheartening part(s): I’ve come to terms with erring on the side of caring too much, rather than too little – hence the veneer of distance, hence the defense mechanism. I maintain appropriate emotional distance. And still, I’m astonished by people, by the human condition - the capacity for generosity and great love and cruelty and plain stinking selfishness. There’s so much loneliness and pain and hopefulness and hopelessness. Widows who learn to dance again and children who steal from their parents and people who tell me so quietly they won’t make it to the next month so can we please get a move on. What to believe except the evidence. Who will listen. What does this all mean. There are so many forgotten, isolated people. Can I say this? Will these statements get me in trouble?

Why do we do the things we do?
Why do we do the things we do to each other?
How do we live with ambiguous loss?
How do we go through the motions, anyway, when we know there is something potentially painful at the end?

The boiled-down answer is really quite simple.

I’ll keep it vague: I can’t help but trace the parallels to my own life. I see the pitfalls that emerge from certain life choices. Maybe they serve as a warning sign for me. I am sitting across from my own future.

They admonish me, jokingly and too-frequently, “don’t grow old,” before they walk out the door. I tell them I don’t plan on it, even as I bite my lip. I don’t believe them.

I don’t think I’ll ever turn cynical and hardened but I pause. I want the same things that they did when they were my age, and more.

Variation?

I dreamt it was the end of the world.

It was dusk. My apartment was in disarray and I don’t know why. Everything was on the floor. My friend and I were standing in the living room when it started.

We could see people screaming in the high-rise across the street. They were being attacked, over and over. There was a silent, collective diphthong of a scream and then they were gone. I ignored them and looked away.

We looked at each other. Our words were brief, emotionless, cauterized.

“Do you want to pack anything?”

“There’s no time to go back to my place,” he said.

I looked down and saw that I was wearing ugly, rust-colored red.

Carefully, I picked through various articles of clothing and stuffed them in a gym bag. I chose clothes that were comfortable, warm, and appropriate for running. The bulk of the dream was spent picking through my jeans and socks and tops. I thought that I should start to panic because the packing was taking so long but decided against it. For no apparent reason, I included a black-and-white print dress. The gym bag bulged. I thought to myself, calmly, don’t bring more than a week’s worth. We’ll be dead before then.

Instinctively, I knew we would be safe for only thirty minutes. I put on a running shoe but I couldn’t find the other. I ran around the apartment with one shoeless foot.

I fear for the next generation

This is a joke, right? Right?

You've already missed your plane.

Queen Penelope sits at her loom and weaves. Every night for several years, she sneaks back to the loom and undoes her day's work.

This weekend confirmed what I have always known: it’s time to wake up because the fantasy is really, truly over. I can’t be tugged along anymore, my dear. I can’t be coddled any longer, my friends. It’s difficult to hold onto these moments of clarity but this is what is real.

You wait and you wait and you wait for nothing. It is your hope projected. It’s a trick. It’s a figment of your imagination. There’s no grand, sweeping gesture or even a small one.

WAKE UP. HE IS NEVER GOING TO COME BACK. And it's ok.

He and I dance, so tentatively. We dance and we dance and we dance around each other, never with each other. It's a silly game of chicken. Who will go first this time. I keep learning to give up. It’s ok, I tell myself, over and over. I make myself sick. I want out of this pussyfooted waltz.

Here is the Los Angeles skyline, here is my reflection in the shop window, here are loud shirts coaxing us into the stores. Here are my friends and we are chatting, idly, because it is a beautiful, cold day and the world is hovering at my fingertips.

World, here I come.

Iowa Caucus

Don't want to get too political here since this is more for emoting but -

Santorum, seriously?! Holy crap, the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

benediction

Every year, my parents seem to shrink, a little. They become sadder and lonelier and angrier. Sometimes when I am sitting at a table with them, it feels like someone is standing on my chest. The silence seems loud, somehow.

In this way, domestic travel can be very disorienting: I shift from walking on the beach to walking on eggshells in the span of two hours. In San Diego, I am a healthy, well-adjusted, responsible adult. In the Bay Area, I can’t do anything except observe, helplessly.

I feel crushed, over and over.

I read snippets of the DSM-IV and it makes sense. I keep thinking absurd thoughts like if I just layer my words more carefully or present the information in a pleasing form, it will inspire change! They will become happy people! I am realistic enough to be cynical and idealistic enough to be hopeful.

Maybe part of growing up is accepting them AS IS and being able to tell them, repeatedly, I care for you, I love you, I forgive you, no matter how many times they hurt me or each other. I remind myself that they come from a different generation, a different culture, a different language, and there may be other unknown factors at play.

I think there’s a sense of renewed redemption, each time, when you get up and try. Every day is a new day to show that you care. Words like a benediction for better times, for some semblance of understanding.

home for the holidays

1. Which girl stuck a chicken carcass in her suitcase? This girl did!

2. Whyyy does this cold weather jacket continue to elude me?!

early Christmas

1. PHOTO PHOTO PHOTO

"A free spirit but also a proud soul, Vivian became poor and was ultimately saved by three of the children she had nannied earlier in her life. Fondly remembering Maier as a second mother, they pooled together to pay for an apartment and took the best of care for her. Unbeknownst to them, one of Vivian’s storage lockers was auctioned off due to delinquent payments. In those storage lockers lay the massive hoard of negatives Maier secretly stashed throughout her lifetime.

Maier’s massive body of work would come to light when in 2007 her work was discovered at a local thrift auction house on Chicago’s Northwest Side."

Source: About Vivian Maier

2. KINDLE KINDLE KINDLE

3. COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE

a perfect day

What would be your ideal day, he asked her.

What do you mean?

You know, your idea of a good day, he said. You can do anything. You don’t have work. You can have fun.

I can do anything I want? she asked.

Well, within reason. Not like a crazy vacation or saving kids in Africa or winning the lotto.

Give me some parameters so I know what I’m working with, she said.

Ok, you’re in this city. It’s a normal day. An ordinary day in which you do things that make you happy.

And no work?

No work, he said.

Oh. Hmm. So, like a Saturday.

Yes, if you want. Your perfect Saturday. You wake up. What do you do?

Hmmm. I wake up refreshed. It’s somewhat early, early enough to get things done but not too early. I drink coffee and read the paper at a leisurely pace. I work out. Wait, no – I go hiking and have brunch with friends.

Ok, he said.

And I read and just enjoy myself. Hang out with friends. Maybe do some writing. I have a productive but fun day. Everything feels right with the world. Hey, did I say something wrong?

No.

What’s wrong? she asked.

Nothing.

Tell me.

It’s nothing.

So then you can tell me, she said.

He said something unintelligible.

Ok, fine, don’t tell me, then, she said. She waited two minutes. So what would be your ideal day? she asked.

My ideal day?

Yeah, your perfect day. Nothing too crazy. Same boundaries. Go.

Ok. Probably start off similarly. But then my favorite day would be one spent with you.

Oh! Wait. That is definitely how I would spend my ideal day, too.

Copycat, he said. It’s too late to change your mind.

But I didn’t know I had that option!

Too bad.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I feel like such a jerk.

It’s ok, he said.

Of course I’d want to spend my day with you, she said.

quite possibly Best Video of 2011

Polite bear waves hello!

Cute!!

National Review article

Applying While Asian

"Celebrate your heritage — unless you're trying to get into college.

To check or not to check the Asian box? That is the pointed choice faced by Asian-American students applying for admission to what are supposed to be the most tolerant places on earth, the nation’s colleges.

The Associated Press ran a report on Asian students of mixed parentage checking 'white,' if possible, on their applications to avoid outing themselves as Asian. The Princeton Review Student Advantage Guide counsels Asian-American students not to check the race box and warns against sending a photo.

In a culture that makes so much of celebrating ethnic heritage, especially of racial minorities, and that values fairness above all, Asian-American students think they need to hide their ethnicity because the college admissions process is so unfair. If African-American motorists fear that they will be pulled over by the cops for the phantom offense of 'Driving While Black,' these kids worry about what will happen to them when 'Applying While Asian.'

Studies have demonstrated what every Asian parent and kid knows: Asians are discriminated against in the admissions process. They are disadvantaged vis-à-vis other minorities and perhaps vis-à-vis whites. In 2005 the Center for Equal Opportunity, a think tank opposed to racial preferences, looked at males applying to the University of Michigan from within the state who had no parental connection to the school. If the applicant had a 1240 SAT score and a 3.2 GPA, he had a 92 percent chance of admission if black and 88 percent if Latino. If white, he had only a 14 percent chance, and if Asian, a 10 percent chance.

Thomas Espenshade, the Princeton University academic and co-author of the book No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, examined applicants to elite private schools with comparable grades, scores, athletic abilities, and family histories. He concluded that whites were significantly more likely to get admitted than Asians.

This accounts for what must be the first mass effort of a minority group to 'pass as white' since Jim Crow. If nothing else, you can see the emotional appeal of favoring black applicants over whites as a tiny, belated step toward making right a grave historical injustice. (Of course, the white applicants did nothing to deserve this mark against them.) But what have Asian-Americans ever done to anyone else? Do the sons and daughters of Asian immigrants immediately arrive on these shores and begin repressing Caucasians with their famously diligent studies and high test scores, such that the panjandrums of higher education must redress the imbalance with pro-white discrimination?

All of this is done to promote a 'diversity' of a crude, bean-counting sort. The private California Institute of Technology doesn’t use quotas; its student body is 39 percent Asian. The University of California at Berkeley is forbidden by law from using quotas; its student body is more than 40 percent Asian. Only a bigot would believe that these schools are consequently worse learning environments, or that they are places characterized by monochromatic, lockstep thinking because so many students share a broad-brush ethnic designation.

The author of The Price of Admission, Daniel Golden, calls Asian-Americans 'the new Jews,' a reference to the 20th-century quotas that once kept Jews out of top schools. The difference then was that Jews collectively didn’t stand for the policy, now a watchword for disgraceful bias. Stephen Hsu, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon and an outspoken critic of current admission practices, laments that Asians seem strangely accepting of the unfair treatment of their children. The official Asian-American groups tend to support anti-Asian quotas because they are captives of liberal orthodoxy before all else.

The Obama administration’s misnamed Justice Department has joined with its wishfully named Education Department to urge schools to get creative in circumventing Supreme Court limits on affirmative action. It’s not quite 'Asians need not apply,' only that they should expect their ethnicity to be used against them should it become known to the authorities."

— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2011 by King Features Syndicate

fog

People who don’t live in San Diego for long periods of time don’t know about the fog.

Once in awhile, the marine layer descends upon the city. It slips in and accumulates until it becomes nearly palpable. It is never frightening or sinister. It envelops everything, gently but deliberately. The fog reminds me of being 18 years old and waiting for the campus shuttle in the dark and sort of rousing myself out of autopilot long enough to notice the fog and wonder why it was there.

Anyway, I was driving home tonight when I encountered the fog again. I was waiting at the stoplight, admiring the fog and watching people as they walked down the street in their holiday best and carried large white plates. I was aware of my clothes smelling like a fainter version of the dinner I just ate and creating a hotbox of hotpot in my little blue car. Earlier in the evening, I had waved off several invitations so that I could hurry home and continue reading this particular novel.

I had started and jumpstarted this book many times over. It was a challenge, each time, to keep going. (I get distracted. I am a mass of distractions. In addition, it’s a difficult novel to stomach.) And then I started it, for the umpteenth time, on a recent plane flight where I was strapped into my seat with a dogeared Southwest magazine that I had already flipped through too many times. I started to read the novel, as if for the first time, and it was so wonderful that I could barely stand it. I didn’t want to look up to breathe and I didn’t want to look away to sleep. It was a very uplifting, pure feeling.

When a novel like this one emerges out of the fog and captures my attention, I am content. I calm down again, I focus and refocus. It nudges this strange heart of mine, puts me in a good place because I feel kindly and inspired.

Since as far back as I could remember, I have expected to wring every bit of meaning/intensity out of every moment of my life. I have wanted to get to the heart of the matter every time. I have expected each second of my life to be the ultimate distillate of everything. I want tangible results. I want my socks to be knocked off. I want to be in awe.

I recognize these expectations to be harsh, unrealistic, and slightly unhinged. As a result: I dream in a million fluttery directions. My head houses a box of frogs. I can’t sit still. If I’m not accomplishing things, I feel listless and lame. I want to read everything and learn constantly and collect useless trivia about history and geography and the human condition.

When I can sit still because I am engrossed, the panic and the pressure dissipates. When I am reading in this place which I now call home and everything is veiled by quiet evening fog, it's enough for me.

a very bad thing

Over a week has passed since The Very Bad Thing occurred. It seems that I have placed enough distance between me and it so that I can sort of address/describe it:

What you feel when you realize, suddenly, that you are utterly alone and ridiculous and there is no one to turn towards for assistance so you better just get your shit together like right now you big baby;

What you feel when you want to cry big, primitive tears but they are lodged in too deep so you do nothing;

What you feel when you are terrified beyond belief and you must assemble rational thought and action together to make it to the next day and the day after that one and the day after that one;

What you feel when a stranger’s kind, unassuming expression can cause you to turn bats on the inside but you fabricate a smile which only looks like a small meniscus of a smile because what else does this poor stranger expect of you and what else is there left to do except pretend things are normal;

What you feel when you know all the crying and whimpering and self-pitying and fuming and knee-deep sorrow in the world won’t accomplish a damn thing and so you move on and it’s business as usual because there is always something left and life is good again.

the shoelace has snapped

The Shoelace

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard...
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood...
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse...
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left...
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the, market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

-Charles Bukowski

Thanksgiving eve

Last night I met up with a friend for a drink. Both of us felt weary from the work week.

“The night before Thanksgiving is the biggest drinking night of the year,” he told me.

“Makes sense,” I said.

We sat at a very dark bar, in contented silence, and stared at the people around us until they looked back, at which point I pretended to look elsewhere.

We talked about a friend, twice-removed: a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. Like us, she worked as a lawyer. Unlike us, she was fat and in a deep fat funk. You could see it on her face and on her body. We wanted good things for her. We hoped that she would turn her life around.

“My friend thinks that she’ll end up regretting her early thirties if she doesn’t do something about it,” he said.

“Probably.”

“I think I regret some things,” he said. “Small things that seem insignificant in the bigger picture. Overall, though, I don’t regret anything.”

“I think I regret some small things, too,” I said. “Like studying too hard and not studying hard enough. Mmmm. Taking life too seriously. Not traveling more. Things like that.”

“Yeah.”

“I always thought I’d end up in a different country for a bit, living an exciting life and traveling everywhere… but that was always a temporary idea.”

“Yeah, I wish I traveled more, too.”

“Overall, though, I’m really happy with the way my life turned out,” I said. “I mean, is turning out.”

“Me, too.”

a lesson in human nature

Thank goodness, I have finally figured out how to embed hyperlinks!

Heaven Is a Place Called Elizabeth Warren

"But many of the people looking to Warren, as they did to Obama before her, are expecting material things — like readable credit-card pitches or safe bridges or jobs or a vote on a bill to create jobs — that are, at the moment, figments as imaginative as dragons and their slayers. And that’s dangerous, because when the person we decided was going to fix it all isn’t able to change much, it’s not just that we get blue but also that we give up. We mistake the errors of our own overblown estimations for broken promises. And instead of learning, reasonably, that one person can’t do everything, we persuade ourselves that no person can do anything.

The key is not just emotional investment in election-year saviors but also an engagement with policy. A commitment to organized expressions of political desire — like those that have been harnessed so effectively in recent years on the right — have been absent for far too long in Democratic politics. Now, with labor protests, campaigns to block voter suppression and personhood measures and the occupations of cities around the nation, there seem to be some small signs that liberals are remembering that politics requires more of them, that they need movements, not just messiahs. But their engagement must deepen, broaden and persist beyond last week’s elections and well beyond next year’s elections if there is any chance for politicians like Warren to succeed."