Age of Enlightenment
September 30, 2014 Leave a comment
Moments of Clarity
August 3, 2014 Leave a comment
What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Yosemite National Park
I typically post an entry every month, but due to technical difficulties courtesy of my good ole domain name keeper Startlogic and July being rather jam-packed with summer activity, it couldn’t be helped that I had to skip a month.
I know no one wants summer to end, but I sense in no time, that of course it will. This transitional period between summer and autumn is my ultimate favorite, I told a friend on Facebook today. It’s as though the direction of the wind has changed. Like clockwork, I’m getting my second wind once again. It’s only appropriate that it should come after a very close friend had come to visit me in San Francisco. The last time she was here was apparently 14 years ago, so she was due and so was I. Quite frankly, I really hadn’t been myself the first half of the year. I felt rushed and hurried most of the time, perhaps even lost, simply winging it.
Blowing in the Wind: A friendship that’s stronger than ever.
Carmen has a way of centering me that no one else can. In that breath, that moment, the past just falls away, and I begin to understand how it’s about passing to the other side and seeing things as they are. This sounds oddly Buddhist, and we even had a long debate about whether Buddhism should be considered a religion (par for the course during our college days and thereafter). Whatever the case may be, her visit was not only heartfelt, but also soul-replenishing.
Our day trip to Yosemite National Park, in my opinion one of the most spiritual places on the planet, was a perfect tableau of our seven-day journey together. We weren’t always so cordial to one another 24-7, but it was all part of the odyssey. Happiness is discovered in our travels not the destination.
When I wrote this entry, I was at lunch before returning to work for a performance review. My mind was clear, in spite of the cacophony of sounds and car horns and the murmur of the lunchtime crowd in the city. The bamboo plant next to me was telling me so.
Lunchtime Rumination: Bamboo speaking and I’m listening.
A Letter to My Younger Self
May 26, 2014 Leave a comment
Lil Rachelle in Ilocos Sur, Philippines
In a few years, you would fly on a TWA airliner to join your parents in the United States, rather sad, dare I say even upset, that you would be leaving your beloved great-grandmother, Lucia, who took care of you in your mother’s absence. But when you were on the plane, you somehow had this idea that you were embarking on a great adventure, and later, you learn there is even a moniker for it–citizen of the world–one that you would feel aptly describes the role you were supposed to step into when you left the Philippines for good.
You would hit the books most of your life in your hometown of Pittsburgh, PA until your twenties, when you would spend most of the years after college having roommates and misadventures and working in your dream job in a city you weren’t completely sold on, even taking it for granted, until it’s 20 years later, and you’re still here. Many times you would want to quit San Francisco, but you just couldn’t quite pull the trigger.
You would fall in love before you turn 30 and lose your job and man in one year. But you would travel to Paris at the end of the year with a ragtag band of your two sisters and two of your friends from high school and college, so that you would return to San Francisco, not only tinged with sorrow, but also the joie de vivre of that magical city. You would clean up after the party you had in your twenties and start figuring out in your thirties how you would want the rest of your life to look like. Your Paris gave you the spirit, and you would try to recapture and infuse it. You would tell people what you don’t want. The things you would love most–music, writing and your family and friends–are your saviors.
You prepare for your forties so that you become the entire package. You tell people what you do want and who you are for someone to meet you at that similar place–one who will love, recognize and accept you for who you’ve become at this point in time. You learn to love and take care of yourself more passionately. You’re less selfish, kinder and more forgiving. You see the difference between falling in love, being in love and love itself, which means sacrifice, stretching and enlarging one’s heart for someone else, putting their needs before yours, compromise and attention (qualities that by and large characterize your parents’ own marriage of currently 44 years that while for years you promised yourself you would never want, is essentially a verity you’ve come to accept and maybe even embrace).
You believe true love will find you because you have a better understanding of what it is, not simply the romantic notions that spring from pop songs and Hollywood movies, but also the changing faces of the moon in shadows and light, shades of gray, cyclical endings and beginnings that test one’s faith in whether it could ever be sustained. For all the experience and wisdom you’ve gained, you haven’t really cracked most of life’s mysteries. And that’s okay because your life still remains an unfinished work.
Into My Springtime
April 30, 2014 Leave a comment
A spontaneous coffee klatch with one of my closest friends Rose …
at a hipster joint called Sightglass Coffee on 7th and Howard in SOMA where I used to work.
I kinda want to bookend this month, not so much as glad to have survived as I did last year on this same day but more so, the product of month-long self-discovery is personal growth and a return to the familiar with a fresh perspective.
I love being with my friends, and I enjoy them so much more after coming through on the other side. There’s nothing brainy about this blog entry, only that I’m finally in a good place.
Monuments Men
April 2, 2014 Leave a comment
Two of My Favorite Guys: Bill and Charlie
I seem to reference funny men in my blog, but one in particular holds a rather special place in my heart. Who would’ve thought I would be saying this about the man who was Dr. Peter Venkman in “Ghostbusters,” Tripper in “Meatballs” or John Winger in “Stripes,” but it makes perfect ironic sense.
It wasn’t, however, when actor Bill Murray played Bob Harris in Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation,” which would become one of my all-time favorite films, that he gained a foothold in my consciousness. “Mr. Harris,” as my friend Salli and I would simply call him, is the older, well-intentioned man who, I believe, teaches young-ish, smart adult women what love is and, most importantly, the twists and turns we should expect from life. It’s okay not to know everything and especially to stand in one’s own truth, particularly in a relationship.
But Mr. Murray, not only Mr. Harris, is mindful of these things, among others, as he framed them in an hour-long chat with supreme interviewer Charlie Rose. While it’s said a woman’s first male role model is typically her father, my penchant for men of a certain age is more indicative of how I learned to accept that daddy sometimes does know best. He has my own interests at heart, despite intuiting it in ways I didn’t completely understand at the time.
Our Selfie, Our Selves
March 3, 2014 Leave a comment
I found the selfie button on my smartphone, and with that a bit of self-reflection on where to go from here. It would be naive of me to believe I would return to pre-economic meltdown of 2008. But I remember having plans that had to be placed on hold until better days. And I believe these are better days.
But I suppose too much has already passed, being forced out of my comfort zone more often than I would’ve preferred, which led to a clearer, more advanced understanding of myself that to even entertain the notion of returning to the past would be going backwards. For instance, I was moved to certain action by a father’s blog last month on the messages that mainstream women’s magazines send out to young women, particularly his daughter.
Dr. Kelly Flanagan writes on the buzzword “naked”: The world wants you to take your clothes off. Please keep them on. But take your gloves off. Pull no punches. Say what is in your heart. Be vulnerable. Embrace risk. Love a world that barely knows what it means to love itself. Do so nakedly. Openly. With abandon.
I guess the Heraclitus quote applies here: No one ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and you are not the same person. Obviously with a new job and a different social landscape, I am not in Kansas anymore. Friends are suddenly in various locations, and greater coordination is required to be together. People appear for one purpose and unceremoniously vanish, only to reappear for a re-purpose of sorts. It’s hard to make heads or tails out of anything lately, but probably the best way to look at it is in song from one of my favorite movie musicals “Victor/Victoria”:
A Sea Change
February 15, 2014 Leave a comment
Harnessing the constant movement of life is a tricky feat.
Change regardless how simple does shake one’s equilibrium. It’s like having a new body. I have to re-orient myself to a better way of living, more in the affirmative rather than having to hide my talents, needs and authentic self for fear of rejection. I know this sounds so Oprah-ish. I guess I am volunteering to fill some of the void since she is no longer part of the collective consciousness on a regular basis.
Perhaps the solution is to simply perch on a rock and be.
As this new phase in my life is taking shape, it has also opened up more “space,” which I’m tempted to fill. However, I’m mindful of that at times it’s just best to leave it alone and accept it for all its simplicity and what it could teach me–to be.
It’s something I haven’t intentionally paid attention to when I had to put my focus on, say, work, and I had to create opportunities, as minuscule as they were at the time, that cumulatively led to pivotal breakthroughs until a major one presented itself. I know this is getting way too philosophical. But the fact I have a choice between the two or a panoply of options puts me in an unusual, dare I say, power position, that I’m slowly yet surely figuring out how to handle.
Feeling Bookish
January 29, 2014 Leave a comment
When one part of life comes together, it is my natural inclination to shore up another portion that may have been left behind. But like anything else, a resolution doesn’t happen overnight.
So when I feel stumped about anything, I typically turn to family and friends, and a good laugh would sometimes even do. But this time around required something more of the brick and mortar kind. So I jumped on the bus and headed to Pacific Heights for Browser Books to retrieve a book I briefly scanned while I was there one weekend but didn’t buy. I lingered and leafed through a few more books before purchasing, and slowly my ill feelings started to ebb. It’s comforting to know a good bookstore worth its heft, no matter how technology renders it obsolete, still has the power to anchor me when uncertainty sends me adrift.
Paris in December
December 29, 2013 2 Comments
Yes, it is sitting on a wooden wine box.
A year ago it was so difficult to allow myself to find joy around this time of year, but I look around and see it so much more clearly now. As another song goes, love is all around.
I removed from storage a framed collage of photos of my Paris trip long ago and set it prominently on my shelf as a reminder of happy days–they are here again. The pop songs never seem to end.
But I suppose what I’m trying to convey, at least to myself, is to keep things simple and light. I know it’s easier said than done. But when I push through a hardship, it’s important to focus on what is so good about being alive.
And then an interesting thing happened to me at the end of this year: I landed a new job. It was the Christmas gift I was waiting and hoping for. In another moment of reflection, I remember a friend telling me to be sure I am running toward something as opposed to running away from a situation. I’m happy to report it is the former. Right now it does feel like Paris In December.
In Memoriam
December 15, 2013 Leave a comment
My 92-year-old paternal grandmother and my dad’s closest friend passed away last month before Thanksgiving, and I’m reminded of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, “My November Guest,” which starts:
“MY Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.”
It was a disorienting feeling–sad but not entirely surprising since they were both in failing health. Nonetheless, their passing compelled me to take stock in my own life and to reflect how best I am making the most of my time in the here and now. This is the mindset I am bringing to the holidays, particularly with my family, and I’ve noticed our relationship has deepened, and my attention is focused on the things that are really important. As the year winds down, I feel more relaxed, celebratory even.
These realizations are pretty standard following the death of a loved one, but I supposed what really surprised me was the outpouring of sympathies from those outside my family, whom I would imagined wouldn’t even care, let alone showed the kind of compassion reserved for a close friend or relative. I guess I have to recalibrate my expectations of people. Death is universal–it catches up with everyone one way or another; and the element of surprise is a gift.
“Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.”
Bookends 