yay!

HOM returns today. i feel like a teenager awaiting her date delicious anticipation and all. nothing beats consistent congenial non-dependent adult company with benefits.

a college education

J1 has a class in jazz improvisation techniques at the community college. it goes like this:

• he drives there in the evening,
• with his guitar and amp,
• they jam for three hours, 
• he comes home late at night.

he has classmates who have been attending for ten years. this is manifestly not a class. it's a subscription paying club.

botox

here is a close-up of our driveway, which will be getting an overdue makeover this weekend. it will be nice, J1 says, not to have the most disreputable looking pavement in the neighborhood soon. and it will be great, i think, to be able to shovel snow instead of bits of cobblestone come winter.

moon madness 2

at the chinese supermarket, i discover that mooncakes belong to two species. the majority are eminently affordable aimed at the proletariat and made in the people's republic of china. a small number sits separately  costs three times the former and comes from wing wah of hong kong.

i circle the display several times and decide that ideology has to capitulate today. my blanket avoidance of made-in-china goods remains, but for this full moon, we will partake of p.r.c. mooncake. there's a price to pay for principles an' all, but this one's exorbitant.

church camp

our church goes to retreat this weekend. we will brave the elements and hole up at a back-to-nature campsite that boasts breathtaking scenery. i am told to spend time with God and the great outdoors.

what i want to say is, there's a time and there's a place. the time for a huckleberry fin adventure is when you are his age, which i am not. the place for repose and meditation is surely some location where i do not need to bring pillows bed linen and insect repellent. one only hopes there is electric lighting.

hawaii five-0

today i relive my childhood watching the re-runs. this is what deliciously comes back:

• that retro look with plenty of hair spray and stepford wives dresses,
• the narrower vowels and slightly breathless acting,
• steve mcgarrett's trademark over-his-shoulder parthian shot look,
• communication via radio dispatcher, and of course,
• that iconic surfer dude music.

for the record, steve mcgarrett is my first megacrush.

cognitive deficit

today, to my horror, and among other items, i find i cannot for the life of me recall the name of the causative agent for lues. those of you who share my background will understand the awful sinking feeling that follows the impenetrable blank where a proper noun should be.

wait, i tell myself. you've been reading up ethical theory. and memoirs of a geisha. you make a killer bolognese sauce. your family values your contribution. you did a good job on the weeds this year. BUT I STILL NEED GOOGLE TO TELL ME THE NAME OF THAT DRATTED ORGANISM. 

moon madness

help! i am battling this sudden tremendous desire for mooncake. pandan snow skin mooncake with lotus paste filling sans egg yolk, to be specific. to be even more exact, the one from bengawan solo.

HOM is away on business. if not we could be crazy and drive the distance to the chinese supermarket and buy me some substitute mooncake. as it is i am missing both partner and supper tonight.

two countries

i know two japans.

one is kawaii land, where every ugly mundane bit of life is beautifully wrapped with exquisite care. this is the japan that charms me with her formal courtesy unfailing helpfulness pretty trinkets and scrumptious cuisine.

the other is my grandparents' japan. this country is the scum of the earth, run by brutal pigs and dogs, despicable in her hubris and ambition. it is the japan of the Occupation.

i compartmentalize so well that most times these two countries are distinctly separate. arthur golden's book is the reason why i finally see a common thread of dignity stoicism and vulnerability running from one nation to the other.

two tales

memoirs of a geisha - arthur golden (1997)

colonel bullfrog - jeffrey archer (1988)

for the first time in my adult life i read of a japan that reels from the ravages of the second world war as much as syonan-to does, or of the japanese suffering through the 1930's and 1940's as much as the chinese and malayans and burmese do. hitherto i have known only how inhumanly cruel they were, but not that they shed bitter tears for their own losses too. it is a reminder not to be arrogantly righteous because we see so little of the whole.

and yet, sayuri is right when she says, i don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it. i think it is only because i am two generations away from 1940 that i read with a sense of wonder and not of anguish or outrage.