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| the mind is like a little first-time buyer condo wedged in the best part of town in Santa Monica. it's expensive and there's only so much space to fit in furniture. a fool would bring home all sorts of things, unable to distinguish junk for gems, whereas a good and thoughtful resident would be very careful about what to bring home. and when she does, it would be perfectly arranged so she and her husband would know they have maximized the space and the relationships between furniture pieces. the couch will have a small coffee table on one side, and a book shelf on the other. the ottoman is probably tucked away in the corner but next to the couch, providing back support, making the seating arrangement an L-shape, and it would be helpful for when guests come for a sit. the couple wouldn't have a tiki torch just propped up in front of the bookshelf, nor gobs of trash - like boxes of random useless trinkets, extra mattresses, or big dead plants - to nullify the usefulness of things like the seating arrangement.
therefore, do not allow useless facts shove out the ones that aren't. keep only what matters.
"modern day reference to Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet
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| i think about jesus and how i want to be enthralled by him in this intense and sacred way. then i think about my family and how they don't give a shiitake mushroom about him. shitake. mushroom. they don't give an enoki, crimini, maitake, portabello, oyster, or hen-of-the-woods mushroom about him either.
i wish they'd give him all their mushrooms, especially the poisonous ones. and trust that he'll give back things much more valuable than truffles. fungi eh.
fungus. fudge popsicles. dipsticks. fungus asahi beer. these are replacements for curse words to express my muted anger. grr.
did you know asahi means "morning sun" in japenese? i guess the morning sun is so tastier than a mid-afternoon one. like the morning dew. dew-op.
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| there's something poetic about "december 9"
last night, c and i had dinner with this couple from church, a taiwanese guy and a korean woman, who were about a dozen years in in their marriage with two kids, one 6 years and the other a couple months old. the guy, b, is a harvard grad training to be an oncologist. the woman, h, is a part-time college counselor. he was pathologic and she spoke like she had taken a fair share of education classes.
we went to pitfire (artisan pizza). c and i had burrata pie (and hand-chopped salad). i've recently discovered and declared that burrata is my favorite cheese in the whole wide world, mainly because of the novelty of it... this soft moist almost tasteless cheese. (oh and the salad had pepperoni and prosciutto, which was off the hizzle). my love for people is like burrata cheese. borderline mushy and tasteless. they had pumpkin pizza and some clammy pasta. h and c were with their pumpkins. there was no clamming up. b&h offered their words of wisdom, and it seemed like the overarching theme was: be disciplined in loving one another. and during hard times, do the loving thing, and the loving feeling will come later. they reassured us that marriage isn't just dry discipline, but it's a symbol of unity and communion, whereby the couple can occasionally have a foretaste of heaven. and heaven is eternity with something impalpable, incomprehensible. it looked like they had a lot to share. and i appreciate their gems of wisdom.
but wisdom rarely holds much weight until it comes from direct experience.
it's like an american-centric man who grew up in the states and is used to comedies like snl, mad tv, married with children, grey's anatomy, the office, or 30 rock, and finds them hilarious, touching, meaningful. then when he watches korean dramas, he thinks the plots are over the top. but he displaces himself with korean dramas and korean pop culture long enough to come back and realize that the shows he grew to appreciate can appear just as over the top or ridiculous as a couple who recently falls in love but are separated by the car crash that causes amnesia for the girl, who then eventually falls in love with the male nurse tending her, and so the first guy is contemplating whether to let her go or fight for her, only to contemplate the most elaborate plot to try to win back her love (anyone seen the notebook?), but utterly fails because of her new disorder. but it is the moment when the first guy leaves the country that she begins to feel these fond feelings of this guy she can't seem to remember. and then one day, when the guy is off to a faraway land (like turkey) to seek out meaning in life, lunacy strikes her and she suddenly remembers everything about her love with this guy. she apologizes to the male nurse love interest and asks everyone - family and friends - where the first guy is so she can find her true love who brought about her lunacy. and so she impulsively flies all over the world and later decides that her last destination is turkey. and as she roams around the city streets of istanbul for three days, she begins to wonder if she should just give up. so she sits down on this little pillar in front of some building as cars and people pass her by (where the scene would evoke a certain emotion because here is this woman sitting there completely still as the world flies by her with the trails of light due to the fast-paced motion like in those photographs (of the city lights at night where you see no cars, but the red or yellow light trail they leave behind due to low iso or shutter speed or (insert photographer vocabulary here))). but back to the story. she's sitting there in this dramatic scene and all of a sudden, this korean man, dressed all prim and proper, walks down the steps of the building she's sitting in front of. the building happened to be one of mother theresa's charity establishments with a big heart on the veneer of the entrance door. oh but yes, as he's walking down, "en vie la rose" cues in the background, and he sees her and is totally surprised. he softly but nervously utters her name, hoping she really is who he thinks she is. "sun?" and she turns around, there is this beautiful glow radiating from her face, but there's also a tear slowly running down her face (she doesn't wear mascara, so it doesn't look so scary). but her countenance of grief and wrought with the despair in having just given-up suddenly changes. she runs to him, accidentally trips on her first step, but gets to him on her third step. they embrace. deeply. she cries and says some things passionately in korean. he cries too, and holds on really tight, and then they look at each other, but at each others' foreheads or mouths (because korean people still have a hard time looking each other in the eye), and there's this very deep intense kiss, and the climax of the same song accentuates the scene and you're like "whoa, that was amazing" as a tear kinda seeps out of your own tear duct. but well, lo and behold, her period of lunacy disappears! and her face went from warm and loving to "who the hell are you, get away from me!" and so she pushes him away, and looks around and thinks "what am i doing in this foreign city!?" she starts to panic and cry while the korean guy tries to comfort her. but she would refuse and run off as he's merely a stranger to her. he runs after her, but she's too fast, because a woman is in panic-mode can lift cars or beat world-class sprinters from trinidad or jamaica. so he stops, catches his breath, cries in the most pitiful and sympathy-inducing cry you can witness in the world. then the scene cuts over to the women running through hustle-and-bustle streets, and she, to our surprise, gets hit by a car, and ends up lying there. the korean nurse suddenly shows up(!) because he is also still in love with her, too, and manages to (how timely) find his way to her in the middle of the street of this foreign city thousands of miles away from home. all the cars have stopped and people are nosing their way to see what happened. the korean male nurse is panicking and crying as he's trying to figure out how to save her life. but he's not a doctor, just a freakin' RN! and so he doesn't succeed. meanwhile, the first guy somehow finds his way to the scene, and then there are now two men crying over a body where the life is drifting from the woman's eyes. but before she actually passes away, she looks up at and says "i love you...." and before she can say the name of either the first guy or the nurse guy, and because you didn't know who she was looking at, the scene ends and credits role and we're all left wondering who she really loved and was thinking about in her final breath. we then leave feeling so emotionally distraught. we get out of our dorm room or apartment and go down to the dining hall or some nearby late-night jewish diner and have a three hour discussion on what may have happened in the film (whether she loves the first or the second guy) and the philosophy of love and whether love can really bring about lunacy in folks with amnesia. and as we finish our discussion (and the meal a few hours beforehand), we either walk back up to the dorm or to our cars to drive home, and we eventually laugh about how ridiculous the storyline was. but we still had some degree of respect for the writer and producer for putting together such a heart-felt film.
but anyway, back to that american-centric man. and so he's humbled by the pride he once had with his american shows, realizing they weren't inherently any better or worse. and then this man tells a little boy about his realization, and the boy would either shrug his shoulders or pretend like he kinda gets it.
hmm. i should get to work.
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| Once upon a time, there was this princess who loved soap, so she would go to the soap store all the time to get soap samples. For some reason soap made her happy. One day she went to the soap store and it was gone! She was so distressed! she went home and cried to her boyfriend, the prince of Ipodia, who came to visit her. He asked her… "what’s wrong?" She replied that her soap store was gone. He said that he would make the soap store for her. She thought it was an awfully nice gesture of him and greatly anticipated the day when her soap store would be complete. But as the days progressed w/o her soap store she realized more & more that she didn’t need it. About a month later the prince of Ipodia came and told her that the shop was complete. She then told him that she didn’t need the soap store anymore. He was furious! He had spent so much money buying her the soap! "What!?" He yelled. "We’re over!" And they broke up and moved on their lives. | | |
| it's almost time for thanksgiving!
things i am thankful for:
01. a comfortable job and wonderful colleagues (though the comfortableness often makes me uncomfortable)
02. people with the extraordinary gift of commitment (though it's an ongoing process)
03. canada
04. home cooked meals, like pho
05. the roommates and everyone's quirks and pecadillos - darren with his "you're beautiful" and "let's call in sick today" comments, charles' laugh and witty banter, ben's tantrums when the chargers aren't playing perfectly as well as his humility, daniel and james praying in their closet and their discipline to be consistent (in prayer/quiet times or in physical fitness), and eugene with his penchant for particularity, organization, and always being there.
06. candice and her grace and love. and our independence day traditions together. 
07. a small town to call home, for my parents not leaving the house i grew up in so i can go back home and recall so many fond memories during autumn and winter (like writing or drawing things with my fingers on the condensation built up on the glass window that leads out to our backyard, or skating on the icy grass at the park nearby (as if it was a frozen pond) while heaving breath that i could see so i can remember how fragile and significant life is, and each breath is.)
08. people who live their lives passionately with God in their center, who push, shove, and ollie around Him with all their faculties, physical, mental, spiritual. and people who seek out more. people who go through the routine of each day and know to qualify how valuable their days are, yet still know there is something more, who seek something deeper, who understand that in their (our) lives is a hidden unseeing truth and beauty behind all things that our Father has woven into the fabric of each day.
09. reconciliation
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