Last days of summer

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – EE Cummings

Becoming a Bride

Brides out there, what was your wedding day like? Was it the romantic, intimate day filled with love and the support of friends and family as you have always dreamed it be?

Before becoming engaged, I thought weddings were cliche. I thought it was unrealistic to think an event so public and so contrived could also be warm and intimate. I was disgusted with gaudy wedding dresses, meretricious centerpieces, cheesy prom-like portraits, and the whole princessy-fairytale fakeness of it all. I didn’t think I was that kind of girl and could never imagine myself putting on such a flashy affair. I preferred a quiet, small wedding, a secluded beach with just a few close family and friends…After the engagement, however, my head was quickly filled with visions of a candlelit garden soiree, guests enjoying a cool mojito and summer evening breezes, and Martha Stewart-like table settings. I was determined to make MY wedding down-to-earth, genuine, heartfelt and reflect our personal style.

I spent a year researching, perusing tons of wedding blogs looking for unconventional wedding dresses, coming up with personal elements to infuse, and devising “down-to-earth” details like home made favors and flowers in vintage vases. “Vintage” and “DIY” were all the rage in every wedding blog and magazine and I was gobbling it all up.

We busted our asses to find the perfect garden venue that was within our small budget (we spent many of our week nights and weekends researching venues hoping to find a secret locale no one has discovered and we visited dozens of venues before finding the right one). We made program fans, designed our own invite suite, collected vintage bottles and vases, bought hundreds of candles, made our own centerpieces, personalized our own mint tin favors, gave out bubbles for guests to blow as we walked down the aisle, hung up lanterns on trees, spent late nights and weekends selecting the right music, and even created our own wedding website.

For months I was looking for the right dress, trying on dozens and bought and returned at least 7. I think I was literally obsessed. Why was it such an imperative? I don’t know…it was like I was filling my head with these imageries of perfect, candid-like moments that I saw on photographers’ websites, blogs, and magazines and they look so beautiful, so effortless and elegant that I desperately wanted to experience that. I didn’t realize until after the fact that all of that were, for the most part, staged.

I found out the hard way and admittedly, I was a little let down by the experience I had versus what I had imagined. As my bridesmaids observed, I seemed to have lost the moment. The irony was, my own preconceived notions of a “perfect wedding” became the very barrier to the natural experience I had hoped for. Please excuse the literary geekiness…I would liken the experience to Walker Percy’s essay, “Loss of the Creature,” which hypothesizes that the true moment is lost because of the comparison you make to the expectations you had of that moment.

However, this does not mean it’s impossible to truly enjoy your wedding. I believe it IS possible to enjoy the wedding, but in a way that is contrary to your instinct. The beauty of weddings is they are totally unpredictable. No matter how well you planned it, you are guaranteed to have mishaps of some kind. But it is precisely those mishaps which are the true, unique moments that make your wedding memorable. Admittedly, it is no easy feat to actually enjoy those accidental moments. I had a lot of fears leading up to the wedding and when some of those fears came true, naturally I freaked out. For example, I forgot to bring my traditional VN gown with me to the wedding site. Though I should have rejoiced at the miraculous coincidence that my friend’s dress fit me perfectly and I was able to borrow it, my all consuming thought at the time was, “My mom custom made my dress for me, she’d be so angry when she sees me walk down the aisle in a different dress!”

I couldn’t be in the moment because half the time I was worried about the moment being messed up.  I think I planned the wedding for others more so than for my fiance and me. If it was really for us, we probably would have had that small wedding on the beach . But we all worked too hard for me to regret it. Really, if you see the photos, you’d see my vision to the T. And from my guests’ point of view, I know most of them experienced the wedding as I had hoped it to be.

I’m sharing this so you’d know the truth behind the pretty pictures, the truth which I feel most people wouldn’t admit. Honestly, I almost didn’t want to put all of this down because overall it was a beautiful wedding and I’m not doing it justice. Still, I think there is something to learn from it, so I dwell a little longer on my mistakes to share this with you. My advice to future brides: Experience the wedding through your own eyes, not others’ eyes. Fight your instinct to control the unforeseeable, give in to the real moment, and take it for what it is, not for what it was planned to be. Don’t take things too seriously. Focus on what the day is truly about: you and your fiance. The union and promises between you and your fiance and support of your family and friends are the only necessary elements; the dress, the flowers, the food, the venue, etc…are only icing on the cake (albeit very expensive icing).

Love this aesthetic

“I don’t strive for perfection in line and form in my work, because for me the balance I’m trying to achieve can’t be represented that way. The incompleteness and imperfection of my work is part of the story. Just as the absence of something in our lives can stir powerful feelings and show us the way to wholeness.”-Rae Dunn

Are We Human or Are We Dancer

Alright, so I used to like the Killers until they came out with this ridiculous song that’s been getting popular. It drives me nuts that the word “dancer” is singular. Supposedly, the line was “inspired by a disparaging comment by Hunter S. Thompson about how America was raising a generation of dancers” (see lyrics here). The irony is killing me. Seriously, you’re going to make a faux-intellectual, obscure reference, while also making an egregious grammar error? I guess if you’re telling us we’re a bunch of idiots, thereby proving Thompson’s point, then yes, you’re right, we are dancer.

Honestly, I don’t usually preach grammar because I make plenty of grammar mistakes all the time. It just drives me crazy when a blatant grammar error is blasting every five minutes on the radio and thousands of teenagers are singing it.

Before I dwell too much and start losing faith in our pop culture, let’s counteract this idiocy with well-written lyrics from The Airborne Toxic Event. There were some debate over one of the lines in their lyrics too, but this band actually offered a legitimate explanation:

“Sometime Around Midnight”

And it starts, sometime around midnight.
Or at least that’s when you lose yourself
for a minute or two.
As you stand, under the bar lights.
And the band plays some song
about forgetting yourself for a while.
And the piano’s this melancholy soundtrack to her smile.
And that white dress she’s wearing
you haven’t seen her for a while.

But you know, that she’s watching.
She’s laughing, she’s turning.
She’s holding her tonic like a cross*.
The room’s suddenly spinning.
She walks up and asks how you are.
So you can smell her perfume.
You can see her lying naked in your arms.

And so there’s a change in your emotions.
And all these memories come rushing
like feral waves to your mind
Of the curl of your bodies,
like two perfect circles entwined.
And you feel hopeless and homeless
and lost in the haze of the wine.

Then she leaves, with someone you don’t know.
But she makes sure you saw her.
She looks right at you and bolts.
As she walks out the door,
your blood boiling
your stomach in ropes.
Oh and when your friends say,
“What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Then you walk, under the streetlights.
And you’re too drunk to notice,
that everyone is staring at you.
You just don’t care what you look like,
the world is falling around you.

You just have to see her.
You know that she’ll break you in two.

*Mikel (lead singer/guitarist): “The line is ‘cross’ and I meant it to mean sort of like she’s holding her drink ominously, as if it’s offering her comfort and guidance.”

Thank you, Mikel for the proper use of a simile.

Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself

“Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself”

Wise words are plenty, but the experience which gives meanings to those words are few and far between. So when such an experience does happen to me, I try to reflect on it and commit it memory, in short, to keep the lesson.

Although wise words do not necessarily teach the lesson, they provide a guide and a goal to reach. I’ve heard people say many times that the best lesson in life is to take life lightly and to learn to laugh at yourself. I used to think, “Of course I laugh at myself, I laugh at silly things I do all the time.” But that’s not exactly what the quote meant. To really be able to laugh at yourself is to be able to take something which might hurt your feelings, might expose your vulnerability, and might compromise that hard exterior you put up, and find all of it a little ridiculous, and funny. It’s the ability to put down pride and stop struggling, and simply smile. This is a genuine change of attitude, and one that makes life much easier.

To my close friends, and especially my boyfriends (the plural means ex’s included), I’ve been notorious for taking things too personally. I’m usually terrible at taking sarcasm and jokes at my expense because I turn them all inward into voices that put me down. Even if the joke is ridiculous, like if someone said I was too fat, I would still take it seriously. It’s a very blunt way of putting it, but I played the victim. I don’t literally “play” the victim, but more so, I believed I was the victim. But I did not realize I wasn’t a victim of their critiques, I was a victim of my own insecurities.

I’m not saying all jokes are not meant to hurt. But it’s important to differentiate between the intention of someone who means to hurt you and someone who is just having fun.

Not too long ago, if someone had said all this to me, I’d inevitably argue that whether intended or not, the action still produces a reaction. One hopes the reaction is positive, but what if it’s negative? Who’s fault is it? The problem with this kind of thinking, which still says, “I’m the victim, and you’re to blame,” is that now I’m making the person who was just trying to joke with me into a personification of my fears and insecurities. This sort of thinking does nothing positive but rather offends myself and the other person, and worse, creates a rift between us.

I first became aware of this was at work. My coworkers are very witty and sarcastic folks and I love them for that. It keeps me sharp. But often the witticism is directed at me and jokes at my expense. I used to take it all very personally, because what they said made me feel stupid, but I kept most of it inside; so needless to say, resentment built over time. One day when they were making another joke about me, I confronted them with how I felt. I told them I don’t understand why they look down on me, why they think I’m such a mental clutz. They were very taken aback and told me they never thought that and had a lot of respect for me. They thought I said funny things, but not because I wasn’t smart. I didn’t really understand still. But after I realized I was wrong about their intention, I was able to look at things differently.

The next time they made a joke, I listened to what they said rather than what my insecurities said. I backed away from the defensive thoughts in my mind and put myself in their shoes. And then I was able to see that myself from this objective view was funny and I able to laugh at me. And it was a strange experience because it felt like a huge load lifted off my shoulders. The more I laughed the more the fears disappeared and seem ridiculous and insignificant.

I’ve laughed with them ever since and whenever we get into one of those roll-on-the-ground, teary-eyed laughs, they’d say, “Don’t ever leave us!” and then, more quietly, more sincerely, “You are the crazy-glue that keeps this office together.”

Before, I wouldn’t have taken that as a compliment. I’d think they were saying, “We need a  court jester around to laugh at.” Now, I don’t think anymore between the lines, because those thoughts are my own doubts of my own self-worth. Sometimes there really is more between the lines, and sometimes people say what they really mean: “You are the crazy-glue that keeps this office together.” No  more, no less.

Teaching in Viet Nam

Five years ago I spent four months in Viet Nam in an education abroad program. Only now, five years later, certain experiences begin to leave an impression on me. But this has always been my modus operandi. I see life through the eyes of nostalgia. At the time what stood out to me were my experiences of the land, rather than the people. Toward the people, I felt angry because I had expected so much to belong. I was shocked that I was not one of them (even though I was born there and lived there for 11 years). I was shocked to find out, that really, I was an ignorant American.

Though naive and full of illusions, I had one positive American quality that helped me immerse: I was willing and open to trying something new. I was probably one of the few students there who actually got to know the locals. Short of cash, I took a job to teach English. It was a struck of luck because I ended up at an illustrious engineering firm teaching English to the top students of Ha Noi. But in a way it was unlucky, because in front of these intelligent and avid learners, I was shamefully incapable of passing on any bit of knowledge they didn’t already know (they knew more about the English language than I did even though I majored in English). At least they were amused to hear my Californian accent.

Instead of making a laughing stock out of me, roll their eyes at me, and stop attending class all together, behaviors which I expected (being all too familiar with American students), they invited me to hang out. A group of them, who I think are the richer students in the class because they drove fancy mopeds and had an easy air of confidence about them, took me to go fishing in a resort-like village. It’s a high class past-time. We weren’t fishing for a meal, but just for the hell of it. Of course, we didn’t catch a thing with our flimsy-looking bamboo sticks, but we did have great conversations (in English). They even tried to teach me to drive a moped, though it was yet another incident that revealed my incompetence. That thing was surprisingly heavy. I could barely hold it up so I clutched onto the hand accelerator. The moped bolted forward and I flew straight into the bushes in front of me, fell off, and inadvertently dropped my wallet, which I didn’t even realize I had lost until 30 minutes after we were well on our way back to the city. The group had to back track so I could retrieve my wallet.

I thought that would be the gossip of the class for the rest of the summer and they would never take me out again, unless it was to have another good laugh (at me). But no, they only got more inspired to show me around (and I mean with complete genuine interest, not sarcastically, and not mean-spiritedly). This time, we went to a famous temple on an island.

It was jam packed with people from all over streaming into the temple like it was a mecca. Everyone had in their hands incense, fruits, and flowers to make offerings and pray for good fortune. The temple itself was extremely small and was mostly modest except for the life-size golden statue of Buddha and the golden basin that held hundreds of burning incense. Incense perfumed the air in that strange scent not of flowers or fruits, but a difficult-to-place spice both subtle and sharp. I was carried away in that foggy air, surrounded by a sea of murmuring hope. A student suddenly grabbed my arm. “Let’s eat.”

They led me out of the temple and into the crowded vendor-lined street. Restaurants there were famous for snails. Those chewy little mollusks were the best thing I’ve ever tasted in Viet Nam. We had a feast of snails cooked in all sorts of styles. My favorite was plain boiled snails that you suck out of the shell and dip in a spicy, ginger sauce.

At the end of the meal, it was time to pick up the check and I was ready to pounce. This was mine. Only, when I reached for my wallet, I had the crushing realization that I didn’t have any cash. I shamefully consented when the students politely offered to split the bill. By now, I had stop expecting their malice and began to appreciate their genuine kindness, but this only heightened my embarrassment for my own inadequacy.

When the class ended, the students presented me with gifts of books about Vietnamese culture. They seemed to have taken it upon themselves to make me at home in their land, to help educate me of their traditions and customs, and to show me why they are proud of their nationality. I had never felt so estranged from my own people and at the time I was filled with disillusionment about who I had become. At my age, they were so many times more mature. They were the ones who were teaching me.

One student, who had a boyish crush on me, after the class ended, invited me to go get ice cream. I agreed to it as I had previously agreed to other outtings, not realizing he was asking me out on a date. He was not one of the rich kids, and it was apparent when he showed up at my dorm on a bicycle.

Where was I to sit? He offered the handlebar. In that manner, me on the handlebar, he swerving this way and that, we painstakingly snaked our way into the city. Every onlooker seemed to melt at the spectacle of us, because it evoked nostalgia for their youthful days. A boy slaving to balance the bicycle handles on which his amused sweetheart precariously perched was the epitome of romance.

We arrived at the ice cream shop and I offered to pay. We fought over the bill for awhile until the shop owner saw the money I pulled out. They laughed. “$500,000 dong? Don’t you have any smaller bill? We can’t break that.” Again, I relinquished to being paid for. He was of course, thrilled, because that was the official sign: it was a date.

He wore a proud smile when he left. However, he didn’t pursue any further and we didn’t see each other again after that. But by leaving things the way they were, no more and no less, he was able to keep his bubble intact. He seemed content for having just that one small moment, even knowing full well I probably didn’t have a clue of his intention and didn’t perceive it as he did. Looking back, it was a wise thing to do. Too often, in our greed, we destroy a moment by extending it.

People in Viet Nam are not all like the students I met. Many were much more gritty, much less innocent and kind. Those students stood out of course because they were the top of their class. But what was admirable was that they embraced their position of upper echelon with none of the impatient rebelliousness, the haughty sense of accomplishment, the pretentious entitlement, or the condescension which accompanied almost every American high school student I knew. Being the best to them was not associated with popularity or even grades.

Before meeting them, I couldn’t even imagine that world, which though often represented in books with painful regret, were to me either dead and long gone or probably idealized beyond reality. The real world I live in is cynical and cold. Then I met them, the dinosaurs of the past, the stuff of stories, and I didn’t even recognize it at first. Afterwards, I was mostly left with a sense of inadequacy. Who knows what the foggy air of nostalgia has blurred after five years. But as the memory of them sink into me, I know I am one of them because I can recognize it at last, that casual air of innocence.

The world hates you when you’re sad

The world hates you when you’re sad. Everyone is disappointed in you because you’re such a downer, such a joykill, such a drag. You play the victim all the time when there’s no one to blame. You can’t take a joke because you’re so damn sensitive. You’re so boring, you never go out. You’ve changed, what happened to you?  You’re so paranoid, people are just trying to help. You’re so dependent, what a cripple, you can’t stand on your own. It’s not that bad is it? You’re really lucky to have what you have, why are you so unhappy? So life is hard, just deal with it.

Good questions and good points. I quite agree. Those words repeat a thousand times over in my head whenever they are voiced at me. What conclusion can I arrive at from these repetitious criticisms but that basically there’s a lot wrong with me?  Or will you say now I am too hard on myself; I am playing the victim? Where do I go from here; how can I separate myself from my brain, or my heart, or my soul, or whatever that torments me, so I can be the happy, entertaining self you so enjoy?

Depression has no source. Why are you unhappy? I can name a million reasons and none of them are true. Every reason will sound absurd to you, because I must be exaggerating. I am just being melodramatic.

Yes, I am all what you say and more. I choose to be that, if you can believe it. Yes, I choose it. I can easily choose to put up my usual front, the one you’re used to, the one everyone prefers. But as I grow older, I grow tired of the games people play. I want to act happy only when I am truly happy. I will be sad if I am sad.

I want to start at being real, whether real is boring for you or not. I will be happy for me and sad for me. I will enjoy my company, not make my company enjoyable to you. Judge as you like, I hear you and the words hurt as they always do, I won’t pretend they don’t, but I follow my own path whether you believe it the wrong one or not.

Depression

Depression sneaks up like a receding tide, every successive wave draws back further and further, leaving barren the rocky crevices, once home to colorful, miniature life.

A rude driver on the road, a cold brush on the shoulder of a passerby, a joke at my expense and I am tumbling into the abyss, holding back senseless tears. Where are the days when I cared not what they did or said? The days keep receding before me, taking with them the best part of who I am, or was.

Everyone was laughing at some silly joke about how I am always tired. I managed a smile and strode quickly to the office’s small kitchen and stared out its small window. Just a moment to breathe and keep at bay the onslaught of cynicism in my head. I come back, quiet, fakeness slowly suffocating me. Why can’t I converse with them, jibe for jibe? Their sarcasm bites like a poisonous snake, crippling my confidence, numbing all my sense of triviality.

I bury myself in another book, another one about adventures I can only imagine about. Vicarious, my new most used word. I read between the lines: thwarted goals, unfulfilled desires, lost dreams. In the waiting line…my new favorite song.

How can one be drowning in low tide?

I clung on more tightly to the low hanging branch. It clung back. Now we drift, two lonely souls stranded in the lonely sea. Should one let go so the other can survive? What if one of us drowns if we let go? Depression seems to love the irony.

And I am drifting farther out, losing sight of land. Parched and lost. When will I see shore again?

Hero Worship (Part 3)

Ever since 300 came out, I’ve been preoccupied with the concept and implications of heroism. To be honest, it’s been a mixed sexual/philosophical fantasy…I’m a woman after all. So to satisfy my cravings, I saw the movie twice. Then I read two fictional novels about Sparta and planning to read Herodotus (a Greek who lived in the Spartans’ time and wrote about them in the most direct/historic sense, though much was greatly embelished) next.

My readings of the two books so far offered interesting, conflicting viewpoints on heroism. The first book I read, The Hot Gates, played up Spartans in the same dramatic light as the movie; in fact a lot of the dialogue seem to come from the book, but the book has much more substance, subtler themes, and deeper character development. The second book I read, Spartan, stayed more true to reality (though not necessarily history). I was most struck by the following Author’s note at the end of the book:

“In the final analysis, the distortions of Spartan society originate from taking a basic principle–aberrant from a modern point of view–to an extreme: that is, that the state is more important than any of its citizens, although its original interpretation may simply have been the sacrifice of the individual for the greater good of the survival of the community. Behavior that still today is termed ‘heroism’.”

The book also implies that Sparta’s rigid rules caused its own demise. Spartans practiced infanticide, abandoning all babies with birth defects; like the English monarchy, they struggled to sustain noble lines, which led to inbreeding, which led to more babies with defects; they were constantly at war, thus losing even more of their valued citizens, the warriors. Though they all sensed that many of their rules (including the laws obliging them to abandon and in essense, kill, babies with defects and to marry only within noble lines) weakened their own state, as the author of Spartan noted, they believed strongly in sacrifice of the individual for the community. They would not deter from the city’s rules. In fact, there is a very famous Spartan saying, supposedly written on the graves of Spartan soldiers who fell at Thermopylae, that read: “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.” They knew, in an excrutiating tragic sense, that their obedience to their city will cause their own demise, yet they chose to obey.

The question is, whether their deaths were senseless. It’s one thing to fight for sensible ideals, like preservation of a community, but why fight for rules that do not preserve themselves or future generations?

Supposedly in A.D. 198 (the Spartans were at their height in 5th century B.C., which was the time of the 300), a Roman emperor asked Spartans to join him in a fight, but when he saw them, they were all haggard-looking weaklings. Their noble lines had eventually diminished. After the Spartans lost in the Peloponnese war against the Athenians, Athens became the center of power and Sparta, once a metropolis as strong as Athens and her rival in different approaches to government, thoughts, and ideals (Athenians were known for their intellect, democracy, and the arts, while Spartans were known for their sparseness, rigid military culture, and producing heroes), eventually dwindled.

Many of the Athenians’ ideas have been adopted and become modern ideas, i.e. democracy. Though Sparta disappeared from history much sooner than Athens, much of the Spartans’ ideas are also preserved and now cast in an almost mythical light. But what is the cause of our fascination? Their lives were no doubt harsh; their laws were contradictory just like modern laws; their follies were as terrible as ours. But something about that epitaph touches my heart…”Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.” It’s so simple, so robbed of grandeur, so matter of fact. Yet, and may be I’m imagining things, or projecting my own feelings, I can sense the sorrow behind those sparse words.

Imagine the sorrow of that life, to be a woman who must abandon a lame son and if she is to be fortunate to have a healthy son, then she must face one day losing him and her husband to battle. Imagine being the warrior departing his family to face blood and gore year after year. This is not just a momentary “difficult time”; this is their way of life. I think what I admire most is their relentless courage to take that kind of life, full of the harshest of sufferings, both physical and emotional, head on: to take the difficulties of life to the extreme and not just endure it, but be the best at it.

Holding out for a Hero: Part 2

NOS: What is defines a Heroe? And on what level? In what situation? Unless you are speaking of THE HEROE. I believe the concept of a heroe is the projection of Man’s desire or fantasy to posses godlikepowers. To me, a heroe is one who stand up for what is right! To risk what is dear to him to defend his belief. To do what is right because that is what he should do, and not for the sake of being a heroe! We are all capable of being a heroe, but we will only know when we are face with the situation. Heroes then are more dramatic, more clear, now, they are harder to spot. But as with most heroes, they shy away from recognition!

Me: I agree w/ most of what you said about a hero. May be today, a hero has not come forth because there has been no great test. I’m sure there are many unsung heroes, the everyday folks who do great deeds. But i want to see them in the kind of glorified light we put up mass murderers and Hollywood actors/actresses. We know names of mass murderers and actors more than we know names of real present day heroes.

I guess, what I really mean to say is I want real role models. I’m tired of seeing beautiful movie stars and fashion models and having only those kinds of people to measure myself by. I want to see and look up to and strive to be people w/ substance. Even though idealized heroes are just normal men who are glamourized, I want to at least be able to idealize what is really worth being idealized (instead of what is idealized now: physical beauty and nothing more). I want ideals like those portrayed in 300.  Like stuff you said: fighting for what you believe, willing to give up your life for it. To have that kind of meaning in your life, a belief so strong you would die for it, is so inspiring! Not to have it, life seems meaningless.

It seems a strange paradox, doesn’t it? Meaning in life is defined by how much you’re willing to give life up for it. But that’s what’s so great…to live with such a strong will and passion, such love for life, that you will not be afraid of death. That’s really freedom, when you’re not afraid of pain and suffering and death. When you have an ideal, a meaning so deep, these things are all worth it to you. I want to live like that.  I don’t want to live life bored with the mindless entertainments of the media, disillusioned by our immoral world, confused by humanity, afraid of suffering and pain. I want to live like a free person…a truly free person.