Winter has arrived

The snow was coming down heavy and steadily a few days ago when I split up from my friends at Union Station and rode the train out of town. There was a weather alert across the country for the winter storm that was passing, which explained the hundreds of people covering almost every inch across the great marble expanse of the Great Hall, splayed out and camped with their luggage trying to get home for the holidays.

I stepped my way through all the travelers after my roommate and I jumped out of the taxi and dashed onto my train with minutes to spare. I put my hood up and my headphones on and left the city. The drive to my family's house was through the rapidly falling snow, which had followed a couple of days of subzero temperatures. The snow was so thick on the ground when I arrived, that I wished I had brought my snowpants and gloves so that I could go and roll around in it.

My dad pointed out a bird to me in the corner by the edge of the woods, a larger bird about the size of my hand and forearm. I caught it landing and we watched it with its head down, poking at the ground with its beak.

"That's a Kestrel. I'm thinking about making a nest for it."

"What do you make a Kestrel's nest out of anyways?" I wondered out loud.

"A box. Where it can lay eggs."

I envisioned that, and watched the bird lift off after a minute and spread its tail like a fan as it shot upward. It had distinct white markings spread across the tail when it fully flared.


And today I've been watching a fawn. On the drive from the train station, we saw a small herd of deer hanging out in the front lawn of someone's house. This is where they go when they are chilling. This one has been standing at the edge of the woods, in the same place where I saw the falcon. There is a runoff of water from where it drains from uphill there, and it seems to be the spot where animals like to gather. I had my camera close by and got a quick snapshot. An hour later I went back to the window and she was still there, joined by another.




The weather warmed up and the massive piles of snow that have accumulated all over the house have been collapsing like bombs as they slide off one part of the roof to another. Anything above freezing here outside of Chicago feels almost balmy. The sound of the water droplets from melting ice and the sight of icycles liquifying has set a rhythm to the day.

Croak!!!!

My voice is croaky, because after a strangely silent and numb couple of months, the narrative stream of consciousness has returned between my ears. I am not sure how other writers find their words, but for me they come from a speaking voice that has always existed in my thoughts and I just write the words as they come along. When I was younger this voice was often at odds with my actual speech voice - I was shy and introverted and often couldn't get my thoughts to converge with the words coming out of my mouth, and so many years people assumed I was borderline autistic unless they happened to be a penpal. I was the master of the passed note in my school days; that's how I made friends.

Anyhow, the past few months have been like the end of V for Vendetta when the fireworks explode the parliament buildings all over town to Beethoven's 5th symphony. It was like a spectacular destruction of my life as I knew it and was comfortable with on many levels - professionally, romantically and domestically. I took solace in knowing that as things came up with me to figure out and work through in my life, the rest of the country and world was going through similar crises and transitions.

A global financial meltdown and new president later, we are piecing together a new plan for the future. I am glad that my soul is coming down from being stunned into shock so many times and my writing voice is returning - the other day I was walking with a dear old friend and found myself fumbling for the pen I had kept handy for that moment, when my thoughts returned.

What makes a human have ability to formulate intellectual ideas above those in a more primal survival mode is being able to clear your mind enough to let those thoughts rise, I suppose. I knew that I was in a transition phase during the past few months, and gripped my mental cap nervously as I assured myself that the silence in my head would pass when I could finally stop freaking out.

So on this Thanksgiving I would like to check in and apologize to this neglected project for my inability to croak out anything positive or good to hear the past few months. I would like to express my thanks to my brain for snapping out of the shock, and my gratitude at being a little older now and having the perspective to know how my creative cycles work - as opposed to dramatically perching on a bridge assuming my soul was dead forever. I have been musing upon cycles in general - as this may be a time of downswing in my life and in my world, there will be a future for which we should focus on positioning ourselves for. Can't wait to see what happens.

Grant Park Victory Rally

Election Night 2008

In the spirit of moving forward, the United States elected Barack Obama as the President of the Untied States of America. This ended a very long process - years of the primary race within the Democratic and Republican parties and a very condensed past few months of heavy campaigning by both parties. I believe the whole country must be relieved that we have finally come to a conclusion.

I watched John McCain's concession speech from the counter of our local pizza spot, as the camera flashed to glimpses of the Obama rally taking place downtown at Grant Park. As he gracefully stepped aside in the race for the presidency, it became more and more apparently to the jubilant crowd in Chicago that it's hope for change was not quite as audacious as it had been in previous election years.

An image gently weeping Jesse Jackson marked the remarkable and historic shift in social and political possibilities. As I crossed the intersection of Congress and Michigan Ave. after jumping on the train to head to the rally, this thought occurred to me again when I realized that I had crossed the site of the riots of 1968 during the Democratic National Convention, 40 years ago. how the world seems to have changed. I heard the crowd roaring when I stepped out of the subway a few blocks away at jackson and Wabash, and knew the victory speech had begun.

The crowd in Grant Park was elated, full of smiles at random strangers, exchanges of hugs and high fives. No one was more enthused and proud than the city's African American population who represented themselves, bearing signs proclaiming "Yes, we did!"

This was not a dream.

Tonight I stepped outside for some phone reception, when I heard the lilting sounds of horns trailing off into the distance. I finished up my call and was about to step back inside when the chords rose, lifting into a progession and the sounds wrapped themselves around my heart. I paused for a minute, then wandered in the general direction of the music.

I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, so I wandered the blocks and ran into people walking their dogs and chatting on the phone, all with their heads up, wondering where the music was coming from. Then a quick light beat kicked in and gave the horns a platform, completing the song. I wondered what I would do when and if I ever got close to where the music was coming from - knock on the door and ask what track it was?

Hypnotized and mesmerized by the sounds, I thought how silly it was that I was wandering around in slippers with my front door slightly open, abandoned, searching for that perfect sound. It was like a perfume lover catching a stray note on a stranger's fragrance, a mark of beauty that was so compelling that I was powerless against it.

I finally decided that it must be coming from a rooftop on Milwaukee Ave. and stopped on the curb to let the melody imprint onto my brain.

This week has been as volatile in my life as the financial markets have been in the news, but with staggering heights to match the bottoming lows. I feel a change coming in the air as nature prepares to shift into a new season, and I feel geared up and ready, weary of a long hot season that began for me 7 months ago when I got on the plane to the Philippines and shed my winter coat. I never thought that I would be stoked out for the cold weather, but right now I am looking forward for the shift into news things all around and can feel those changes at work already.

Post-birthday Spiral

I hate to admit it, but ever since my birthday life has been charging forward like a barreling train, in which I have been lounging louchely in the party car. This past week I have gone to sleep (or passed out, exhausted) with dancebeats more times than not, my muscles pummeled by soundwaves from speakers. It sets the soundstage for my dreams, which are larger and livelier than ever.

I don't live like this all the time, and this kind of energy is actually typical for me around this time of the year so I know to enjoy these fun times for what they are. My birthday occurs during a season of change, which always makes me reflective. Recent events have brought a unique tinge to this particular year, which have led me to spend this time reflecting on previously unconsidered meanings of the idea of freedom.

***

This weekend my friend Jenny is getting married. I have known her since we were little girls playing on the swings in the park, from so far back that I remember when she lost her baby teeth.

It will be an honor to read this at the ceremony tomorrow, as it has been such a beautiful thing to read all week for me:

Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts.

But I shall show you a still more excellent way.

If I speak in human and angelic tongues
but do not have love,
I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy
and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge;
if I have all faith so as to move mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own,
and if I hand my body over so that I may boast
but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.
It is not jealous, is not pompous,
it is not inflated, it is not rude,
it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over
injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing
but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things

Love never fails.

Obama DNC Acceptance Speech

Moving rhetoric at the DNC.

I consider this the first presidential election to accurately represent my generation, having grown up in a community outside of Chicago, where my classmates and I were of the first of many different ethnicities to represent our cultures in largely white communities. It was an undeniably historic moment to watch him break through the historically untouched demographic of the power structure of our country and step into the role as a presidential candidate. "I know I don't fit the profile..." - I know how he feels.

I'm not for Obama because of his race, just as I was not for Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. I am for him because he is a critical thinker with principles derived from an unusual upbringing, and a tough but peaceful nature. My opinion doesn't matter really - I'm from Illinois and he's got us in the bag.

He evoked Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. towards the rousing end of his speech, which was what I was watching for. It is a pleasure to listen to an excellent orator.

And some of his last remarks were fitting for the theme of spiralling onward, and moving forward:

"We could have heard words of anger and discord,
told to succumb to the fear and frustrations,
but to people of every creed and color
Our destiny is inextricably linked
we cannot walk alone, we shall always march ahead
we cannot turn back
not with so much work to be done

We must pledge... to march into the future."

BMXes around town

I went over to Mikey's house to listen to music and watch tv, and wound up being around when he got his new bike! He found an aluminum bmx that was rode once before getting stored for a couple of years. We put in new tires and tubes, replaced the seat and put a chain tensioner on the dropout of the back wheel. Stoked!

True to form, Mikey will be customizing this ride to his exact specs. It's getting a new blinged out chain, some pegs and some sweet handlebars. This is the sort of guy who matches his shoes to his moped!

Hanging with Mikey is fun because we invariably feel like little kids who've been let loose in the city. The fridge is always empty except for grape juice, red bull and ice cream. Every time I've hung out at his house over the years, he's always used his small kitchen floor as a mechanic bench and once had all eight of his mopeds squeezed in there. This night, he was switching hard drives on his computers and had like 3 macbooks in different pieces as well, so there were a bunch of different specialized toolboxes strewn about. We sat on the floor and worked on bikes.


Sorry for the lame picture - my camera is still broken from the time I sat on it in a club.

There is something to be said for riding in an upright, laid back position. It's quite a nice change from the crouched over racing form that I am usually in when I am on a bike. Riding BMX style means that you can observe the street from a less vulnerable position and get around looking effortless, like its no sweat. All of the 12 year old boys on our block are envying Mikey's bike; I could tell when they gave us a stare down when I rode the pegs down the sidewalk.

Mikey's friend Britton got a BMX the next week. He replaced the brake and has plans for a new drive train, tires, handlebars. He doesn't care because he got the bike for like $40.


He's got the same rims as my friend Jeremy, who loaned me his bike when I visited Denver. It was the best way to get around, and I am so glad to have had the chance to be so stylish when I was there. I couldn't be around all this bike customizing without referring to this sweet ride:


Now that our old roommate finally picked up her cruiser from our back porch, I'm considering a new bike; its probably going to be something laid back and solid.

Ashes to Ashes

This morning I woke up in the woods, listening to the wildlife clicks and buzzing of the early morning face down on my pillow in a pool of drool. I pretended to sleep for an extra ten minutes so I could listen to the nature sounds and think my day through before pulling myself away off of the blanket.

We made coffee by boiling water in the kettle after using the last of the wood chips to make a fire. Everything was damp in the morning coolness. My soundtrack for this camping trip was the soundtrack to Imagine, the biography of John Lennon. I thought of the 9 bundles of firewood that we had burned through, remembering how heavy they were to carry and how as individual units they were almost as expensive as a gallon of gas. In that case our little excursion cost about half a tank. The oldest fuel, as much as commodity now as it has been from the beginning of time.

I stared at the hexagonal ash pit, into which disappeared all those logs, feeding a raging fire that warmed and nourished us. It was the focal point and center of our world for a short while, acting as our hearth, keeping away the raccoons and warming my feet through a dark night. When we arrived, the pit was still hot from the last time it had been used in a fire hours before, and there were old logs of white pulverized powder that crumbled apart when I hit them with a stick.

The ashes were a white shadow of their former form, light enough to disintegrate upon touch. The raging and spirited flames that swallowed all those logs extracted the energy to feed its strength, transforming all that wood into dust.

Jen and Brian tended the fire in a cooperative effort. They made a great team and were excellent at keeping the fire alive, stoked and raging. They'll be married 3 years this September and it was such a lovely thing to see the easy combination of their efforts in mesmerized concentration, sustaining the heat, feeding the flames, fanning them. Giving us insight on the concept of unified energy control.

As I stirred the ashes and watched the dormant buried heat bubble through like a volcano, I wondered what the next part of the process is. That heat was so live! What is ash and how do things like phoenixes and whatnot rise from it?

I looked it up. Ash is comprised of varying levels of metal oxides and minerals depending on what kind of wood you were using to melt your smores and cook your bacon. Burning the wood decreases the wood to 6 - 10% of it's original mass. I was guessing way less than than. The tree that produces the wood extracted the minerals and elemental necessities from its environment (the earth, and the air) in order to grow. The most abundant mineral in trees and ash is calcium, followed by potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and even aluminum. Because of this, ash has been traditionally reused as an alkaline subsitute for lime. This dusty mess was once valued as a fertilizer, recycling the nutrients that were taken from the earth by the tree to plant new ones.

How appropriate that the wood releases its energy like the force of the sun - in a very simplified way when Jen and Brian created the intense beating flames, it was relinquishing that solar energy that the tree had absorbed in a controlled way, leaving behind only what is necessary for the new generation of trees.

A 200 pounder

I was whisked away to Wisconsin before I had a chance to put my things down. My friends showed up on my doorstep and dragged me away - I wasn't even sure I even wanted to go camping and was secretly thinking up excuses to bow out. They weren't taking no for an answer though, and on the way up there I hugged my pillow and passed out with headphones on until we were in the next state.

When I woke up we were rolling into a campground lobby and I saw this guy:

200 lb. black bear

Georgian reporter gets shot, gets up, keeps on

War reporter gets shot while filming, continues unfazed.

The Full Moon of August

I watched Michael Phelps, champion swim racer, pull his way to a seventh gold medal in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing while competing in the individual swim medley. I could barely count or see his strokes, he was moving so fast, and when he pushed off of the pools walls he gained momentum that bounded him ahead setting another world record.

* * *
"There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music." George Eliot

My friend Dave called me and invited me over for a beer, so I dropped into Heaven Gallery (1550 N. Milwaukee). Inside the second gallery space were rows of chairs occupied by patient music lovers facing a cello , a violin, some kind of big xylophone, some microphones and a piano, all in front of the window that faces Milwaukee Ave.

As the musicians tuned their strings in a low cacophony and the audience murmured, I found a place to sit out of the way. The windows were closed and the room became quiet. and the first strings of the performance began with a violin and cello duo called Wild & Wulliman. Their first piece was called Amore Scaduto. Although I had straggled into the performance with an exhausted frame of mind, they commanded my attention from the opening notes. Picture your heart being played like the pulls of a bow to a string, the tension and release of the sound reflecting notes that move your emotions in ways that you can't even being to understand. I soon got lost in the music and began to realize different layers of complexity to all that had been on my mind.

I closed my eyes, and the musicians introduced themselves. The next song was titled Pastor Hick's Farewell, and was sung by the soprano voice of a woman named Mary Bonhag, accompanied by Evan Premo on the double bass. It's lyrics spoke of the ebbing of love like an ocean tide, and it took all of my will to contain my tears. The low strings are the ones that got me, rustling loose grave emotions that seemed to have settled inside me, lightening them up.

I was so happy to have dropped in. Music is the best thing for loosening tension and unwinding abstract notes... when words can't express all of the complexities that color our experiences, these chords and harmonies can.

Golden Mean

Interesting article on sacred geometry

Samurai Sunday!

Duel at Ganryu Island

With my dad across the world, engaging in the sort of ronin battle of sorts that he's been preparing for his whole life (long story), my brothers and I are left to entertain ourselves with our own discourse on samurai fighting techniques this morning as we keep our mom company. This is a clip from a series we watched Sunday mornings when we were little, from the epic life story of the samurai Miyamoto Musashi.

Bahai Bike Pilgrimage

I woke up feeling like a tighly coiled rope, my muscles stiff and uncomfortable beneath my skin. It had been a night of restless energy and angst filled sleep. I dreamed of gravity and pressure, of forces pressing in on me like the weight of being under a hundred meters of ocean water. I walked over to my neighborhood coffee shop to start my day as I usually do but with a long stone cold stricken expression, the kind of look that makes people avert their eyes when they see you. My phone rang. It was my bicycle friend.

"How do you feel about riding up to the Bahai Temple? I'm thinking about going up there today. Need some spiritual healing."

"I'm down," I answered immediately, didn't have to think twice. "I think that's just what I need on a day like today. We'll be bike pilgrims." I had been there before, rode the 16 miles during a late night trip with a group of midnight riders about 2 years ago this month. When I walked through its winding gardens under a glowing full moon, I knew I had to one day return to see the grounds on a sunny day. How strange to be compelled back during this moment, and how absolutely necessary too.

After taking care of some business I set myself to cleaning off the drive train on my bike, tuning it and filling it's tires with air. I packed my backpack with my lock, water jug, a dress and a towel, then stepped into my flip flops once again and rolled over to meet my friend.

The ride up to Wilmette began during the hottest part of the day, but once we started heading north on Halsted the cool breeze of the lake kept the sun from being too exhausting. Riding in the busy streets of a highly trafficked city requires absolute, intense concentration so it seemed like most of the time was passed focusing on just surviving in the bike lane. As the miles slipped by in quick succession, I began to feel the exhilaration of my bicycle's movement. It was like I was shedding the hard exoskeleton of despondency. Compressed into the low crouch of the pursuit position, I focused on the rhythm of my breathing. Before long we reached stretches of smooth road, and a song burst forth from my lungs. It was Sam Cooke's "It's Been a Long Time Coming".

At the end of Lake Shore Drive we got kind of lost in a winding path. Our route was influenced by avoiding certain high traffic intersections, detours past streets under construction. When I found myself cycling on a narrow sidewalk lined on both sides with construction fencing, with several large patches strewn together with plywood I started to worry that we were on the wrong path. I felt myself becoming more agitated, especially when I found myself pedaling on top of random piles of sand and puddles on what was becoming increasingly bombed out streets.

"Don't worry, look up!" said my friend, and just when I was about to start looking for a way off of that path, I saw the top of the dome of the temple.


My skin was covered in sweat and felt something like the outside of an airplane after a transcontinental journey. I soaked my towel in water and wiped the salt off of my face and cooled off until my heart stopped racing, before putting on a dress so I wouldn't be striding into this holy building looking like I had just stepped out of the gym.

This is the threshold of this temple. It holds to many of the forms of ancient temple building, including making the journey towards the inside of the sacred space through several spatial stages with its winding gardens.

Here is the view from the top of the stairs:

* * *

Inside, I breathed in the beauty of the architecture and watched the light filter through the windows. I read some of the mystic writings of the founder of the Bahai faith, who was said to have been a divine messenger. This religion is founded upon the principle of the oneness of humankind, espouses equality between men and women, harmony between science and religion, the abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty, and a focus on universal acceptance.

Here is the most famous of the Bahai faith's sacred texts:
The Seven Valley and the Four Valleys

* * *

One of the things I prayed about was the guidance to find the right path, which makes the entire return trip kind of ironic in retrospect. After a long contemplative walk around the gardens, I was ready to leave. I was not thrilled about going down the same dangerous path that took me to the temple, and felt compelled to stay close to the lakefront. First we crossed this river, and Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers To Cross" went through my head.


My traveling companion did not exactly share this decision, and wanted to bike through the city in the interest of getting home quickly. We parted ways unintentionally within the first few miles when we got separated, so the rest of the way home I rode alone. It was just as well, as I was becoming fatigued and the rest of the trip was a focused sprint that took the rest of the energy I had. By now my lungs felt wrung ragged, and about to burst which replaced the dreadful hollow feeling that had been in my chest all week plaguing me. As my muscles burned mile after mile, my chest felt strangely enough as though there was an owl getting ready to explode out of it and take flight. I day dreamed about how nice it would feel to shower and put on some comfortable pants as I kept moving forward. Here is the view of the city from the beginning of the bike path and the last place I saw my bike friend:


It was beautiful, but the view just spoke of how far I had to go. I put my head down and pedalled.

My mind went on auto pilot and I quickly regretted not having any energy bars on hand. I did this whole 35 mile trip fueled with one banana and a quarter of a mango. I have been fasting since the weekend, and this made the journey that much more surreal. The only sounds I registered were the industrial vibrations of machines and the sounds of birds. Voices, traffic and all other sounds were drowned out as I kept my pace. I was becoming more and more lightheaded and focused all of my mental energy on keeping an eye on my path and staying safe.

I rolled in and felt completely wiped out. As though I had rode all those miles on top all of the muscles in the front and back of my torso. I earned my sleep tonight and look forward to having better dreams.

Fury in the Skies

Photo courtesy of Accuweather photo archives

Yesterday the weather in Chicago was raging. What began as a pretty calm and clear evening quickly turned into a violent, howling summer storm with gale force winds. (Winds of 94 miles per hour were recorded 3 miles off the shore of Lake Michigan) The weather report stated that there was something around 200 bolts of lightning in one hour from the storm. It hit fast and was ferocious, trapping me at the climbing gym with my younger brother and his friends for hours when the streets around the building got quickly flooded. I practiced tying knots and worked out my forearms and fingers on the rock wall - it was kind of a pleasant way to take refuge actually. The gymnastics team huddled downstairs with us until the sirens stopped. I peeked out the front window and watched the lightning rip with mad flashes all across the sky, making it look like the synapses of Frankenstein's brain. The sky was full of that unrelenting, merciless energy all night. We got home during a brief lull in the rain, but it got its momentum going once again and the windows were rattling scarily by the time I went to sleep. Mother Nature: more furious than anything anyone has seen.

I stared at the lightning and was mesmerized by the force with which it cracked the atmosphere. It was a thrill to see so much electricity in the air, there was an almost palpable charge. It made me think of the significant moments when I've stopped to watch lightning storms at critical times in my life- high above the ocean in a rainless electrical storm, across the Colorado sky high in the mountains. One lightning bolt contains 3 billion kilowatts of power, said to be enough energy to run a major industrialized city for months.

Looking at the way the ground absorbed the crackling bolts thrown at it through the ionosphere, with enough thunderous force to send vibrations through my body miles away - all those billions of kilowatts disappeared on contact- my thoughts turned to Nicolai Tesla, a discoverer of some of the most significant observations in the field of electrical engineering such as the fact that the earth is a conductor of electricity. He was also known as the "sorceror of lightning".

Said to have been born during an electrical storm, he went on to school the world (alongside Thomas Edison) on the principles of electricity. He devised a transformer which generates artificial lightning by increasing the voltage of a current which gets transferred between oscillating circuits. With this discovery we are able to harness the energy of lightning; now we can even make lightning ourselves. (!)

Tesla is ranked amongst my favorite mad scientists: I have a fondness for eccentric geniuses who advance humanity profoundly and exponentially with the work of their lifetime, yet die unrecognized and in poverty. It is heroic to my romantic nature; he was driven by a curiousity more true, sincere and primal than that which motivates the normal person. A curiousity which in itself drove the industrial revolution and allowed us all to better understand certain awe-inspiring forces of nature, at least the tangible mysteries of the physical world we live in.

Shouts!

Wearing a Sundress Was a Bad Idea

The blister on the inside of my right calf was the size of a small chicken egg when it first puffed up. All the skin around it was red and angry looking, and when I poked the sac-like pillowy protuberence it squished firmly, full of clear blister fluid. "That's not good," I thought, the proceeded to deal with it the way I deal with most of the cutaneous injuries that I regularly incur as a skateboarder and cyclist - I rolled down my jeans and went on my merry way. Being a child of a doctor and nurse makes you laugh at pain and non-life threatening injuries. Besides, I've found that most of my sports injuries like strained muscles, sprained joints, cuts and scrapes - the ones that aren't deep anyways - benefit most from just a few basic things: epsom salt baths, lots of sleep and being left alone. I also take care to eat better when I am healing up.

A couple of days later I noticed a screaming pain when I woke up, and a wet spot on the sheets. Are you grossed yet? This wet spot wasn't of the ordinary variety of bodily fluids you might encounter on a bed sheet, but even worse because it was from the blister on my leg which had by then swollen even more. Fearing an impending scarrage that would render future skirt wearing or shorts wearing unsightly - and make those activities an actual disservice to the world around me - I decided to finally treat my wound like the third degree burn that it was.

I had always wanted to try the moist burn pads that are in the pharmacy next to the band aids anyways. I ran to get some bacitracin and said burn pads, as well as a bunch of adhesive gauze that would let the wound breathe and not stick to it.

A few years ago I used to get injured like this all the time, mostly on my elbows and knees, the sides of my ankles and even my hips. I took a lot of thrashing in the skatebowls before I could ride them, and before I learned how to fall. Now I use my whole body to slide down the side of the wall and go limp. Or if I am not on a transition and on flat ground, I run out of the fall.

Once, an 11 year old kid collided with me going pretty fast at the skatepark and I saved us from certain doom by grabbing him under the ribs, picking him up, and running some paces until our momentum was spent. He was devastated, but I didn't feel bad that he looked like a baby in front of his friends because I had to do what I had to do.

So I carefully cleaned the blister with soapy warm water and betadine. I could kind of see under the top skin of the blister where it was slightly torn and could tell that it was a pretty bad wound. Yowza! That motorcycle exhaust pipe is probably hundreds of degrees hot. Wearing a sundress had been a bad idea. "Just think," I thought, "just beyond that are all the nerve endings and fatty tissue of my calf!" I wonder where the muscle starts?

By now my whole calf was throbbing and so I put a second skin blister pad on top of the whole mess and called it a day. For the past 10 days I've been monitoring its progess. The blister pad worked pretty well at keeping it hydrated during the crucial first few days when the white blood cells are trying to patch up the open.

Time.

I rode my bike four miles today, the whole time thinking about time and how I often seem to be racing it. I do so many little things to save time, but there always seems to be a conflict in partitioning and distributing it... then there are hours that go by when it seems that I am not using time well, which balances out those days that I am so busy and experiencing so many things that every moment seems alive with endless significance.

I assume it to be a relative thing. In other cultures that I have experienced, time is viewed much differently than my life here. When I was in the Philippines with my family, the people we met up with seemed a bit confused and almost inconvenienced by the fact that we would meet at the exact time that we said we would. "They really are American!" they would say when we would call to make sure that they were clear on our version of time, and hustle a bit faster to get there. For a good laugh, ask your nearest filipino friend on their outlook regarding time. Family parties that say 4PM on the invite really mean "Start thinking about getting ready to go a 4PM" and everyone knows that the party really starts around 6-ish.

When Christophe and Didier were in Chicago, I found that the frenchies were just as laid back in their interpretation of time. Planning to leave the house at 8AM kind of meant being really ready to go by 10:30. That is just how they rolled, and no amount of throat clearing and glazed over looks could move the process along. In the mean time, they would be drinking coffee, making grilled cheese and ham sandwiches, listening to music, talking and smoking.

Somehow we managed to get everything that they needed to get done, done. We missed a couple of beginnings to soccer games, but otherwise they would make up for their late starts with late night - most evenings we would wind up sitting down for dinner close to midnight. They insisted on having a cocktail hour and sitting in the yard for no other reason than to relax. In a filipino household, things are communal like this as well. We might be singing a song on the karaoke machine, playing piano, poking fun at our moms and grandmas or just enjoying a quiet moment of peace or conversation.

There is an opposite extreme to this end - 120 hour work weeks, meetings, deadlines. I'd like time to go a little more slowly sometimes, but in this kind of life it always needs to go faster. This is where time becomes like money, a quickly slipping away commodity that there is no subsitute for. I worked in one job that bridged an island culture with a western business model that took over the laid back effects of equatorial life. Our office made sure that shipments got delivered, emails got answered, bills got paid in time and generally made sure that the business ran smoothly. That's how things get done in this world, but I always wondered if I might be on the wrong side of that equation.

The Garden

A work in progress for almost 30 years, every tree and every plant was thought out carefully. The slopes of the hills are run with an underground irrigation system, and he probably never had more fun than when he was building the stone walls. In some shots you can see our dog Quasimodo's old doghouse, which he never used. He didn't have to, with this magical wonderland in which he spent his life prancing about chasing squirrels and skunks. But he's a story for another time.

Photos from my dad's secret garden.

It's been a year of epic rainfall.

Sige na

Saw my dad off to the airport. It was the post-modern equivalent of riding the horse to the city gates in farewell, only our horse was an funky taxi with an ornery Bangladeshi driver. I jumped in at the last minute when the cab pulled into the driveway, decided to catch a train home at the airport. I had a question to ask, and I kept him company up to the security gate. My dad and the driver had a tense standoff in the car when the driver answered one of his questions with a snappy attitude, which resulted in a confusing exchange of money when he tried to return my dad's tip but got the total wrong anyways.

Another lonely trek home from O'Hare.

I Hear the Gentle Voices Calling

This morning I hung out with my dad in his office while he prepared for another trip back to Cebu. Tomorrow will be the fourth time in 2 years that I'll be saying goodbye to him - my dad has become a solo wanderer now. He probably had always been one. The work that he is doing is the work of a lifetime, tying together the disparate ends of his life and reconciling things that were done by people who are already dead. He became the head of a divisive and contentious family upon the death of my aunt last year, and is returning there to resolve issues that were left in the wake of her passing away.

My dad had escaped the stifles of his family by studying hard and keeping his head down until he departed immediately upon finishing medical school. He lived on the other side of the world in Chicago for 30 years, until these obligations found him boarding the plane at O'Hare and reentering a world he chose to leave a long time ago. It appears to me that there seems to be some things that you just cannot escape, the biggest battles in life will find you and confront you until you've resolved them no matter how far you've gone to avoid them.

Between buzzing around mailing taxes, writing letters and organizing his paperwork, my dad dj'ed for us by playing his favorite music off of youtube. He was mostly just playing whatever he felt and would even change the song sometimes in the middle of the track. As I tried unsuccessfully to choke back the tears through each song, I realized that there is indeed a romantic and morbid streak that runs deep and wide through my family, a melancholic inclination that can only be soothed with hours long bouts of listening to haunting lilting melodies.

Some of these songs had been played for him on the piano by my grandmother. She was one of a few people in her town who owned a record player (in the Philippines, just after WWII) with which she bestowed this passion for music from all over the world and from every era onto my dad. Did she know she'd be unleashing a million dreams throughout many decades through the power of music? How could she not?

My Dad's Youtube Playlist:

Beautiful Dreamer - Roy Orbison
The Great Pretender - The Platters
Old Man River - Paul Robeson
Ave Maria- Hayley Westnora
Micaela's Aria - Gordana Jevtovic-Minov
Those Were The Days - Mary Hopkin
One More Walk Around the Garden - Sarah Brightman
Vincent - Josh Groban (my dad dedicated this to my brother Ramon)
Old Black Joe - Trapp Family
I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair - Don Ameche
Beautiful Dreamer - Marilyn Horne
Once Upon A Time - Frank Sinatra
Malaguena - Lecuona
Damisela Encantadora - Lecuona

Here's where we'll part ways

Traveling Shoes Are Worn Through