Diamonds on a Desert Island

Even on a day like today, he's limping around the yard burying the rawhide bone. The backyard has become a minefield of sinkholes and upturned dirt.

He never eats the bones. As he's gotten older, his holes have become more shallow; with just a light flick of a foot, I found many a bone half decomposed by worms and bugs.

What a bewildering beast who gingerly takes the fresh rawhide bone and buries it in the ground. Poor fool! He never remembers where he buries them, or maybe he simply is waiting for the right day to unearth his bounty. Maybe, in his mind, the bones are like wine: better aged after a few years.

Even on a day like today, in his thirteenth year, his debilitated legs carried him out of the kitchen and into the yard to bury his bone. From the kitchen window, he excitedly hobbles as if he has a ten-pound sand bag hanging from one side. He is slower for sure, but when he receives the bone, his ears and eyes look as they did when he was younger. For once, I genuinely hoped he would eat the bone, but like always, he buried it somewhere on the side of house, saving it for an undetermined day worth celebrating.

It's 10:30. With a jingle of my keys, he moseys around side of the house to meet me in the front near the Jeep. Fresh from burying his bone, his paws track dirt from the backyard and leave little mounds of brown on the white driveway. After knocking some of the dirt from the webbing on his paws, I smelled my fingers, as I always do after I play with him—the smell of gardening and the smell of Fritos.

The step up into the car has been too high for years, so I lifted him up, sacredly feeling the lump near the border of white and black fur on his chest. Of course, it's still there.

On the way, we passed his park where we would meet other dogs in the neighborhood. We passed the clubhouse pool where I let him swim when no one is looking. We pass the Jack-in-the-Box parking lot where I picked him out from a breeder who drove down from Oregon. With him, life seems to be measured in events we've done together, not years.

On the cold metal table, she shaves a small acre of his fur away. She dabs the area with alcohol to prevent infection; she must have done this out of habit. It's 11:10. I put my nose and upper lip on his face, just between his eyes. I held his ears between the circles of my index fingers and thumbs. With my palms, I mashed his cheek skin over his eyes and whispered, “Don't look.”

As the cold chill coursed through his veins and blinded by his own skin, I imagine he saw his bones, stored for a tomorrow—all the time and potential in the world to unearth his life's work.

Disney's Gaston Died the Worst

I grew up on Disney films. They were entertainment, but they were also the most important didactic medium of my formative years. The characters and events inspire children’s imaginations while providing moral centers. I wish I had half of Simba’s bravery, Aladdin’s inner nobility, Mulan’s honor, or Pongo’s sense of family. These characters are moral icons that got mass-produced by the Disney machine, but somewhere, behind the capitalism, lies truth of human character and spirit.

And for every hero, there is a villain, an antagonist to block our hero’s path. Often times, these villains test our heroes and push them to their limits. Pretty much all antagonists in literature or movies or Disney Movies have a goal. Maleficent wanted revenge for being snubbed to the most important birthday party in all the land. Clayton wanted fortune in exchange for gorillas. And Jafar, lovable twisted Jafar, wanted the all-elusive power.

On a brief tangent: Jafar’s three wishes were: be a sultan, be an all-powerful sorcerer, be a genie. Maybe he should have wished for a bigger brain.

These villains are sometimes more memorable than the hero’s themselves. Hades and Hercules? Please! I’d take the Underworld god with a fireball for a head over a pretty boy any day. But in the end, these villains always die. Well, to clarify, these villains always come to an endpoint. For example, lovable Jafar does not “die,” but spends his life in limbo while Aladdin lives on into the infinity of “happily ever after.”

Some men break their necks. Some dragons are struck by Excalibur-type swords. Some squids are impaled by ships. But no villain’s death is worse than Gaston’s in Beauty and the Beast.

Gaston is the mythopoetic representation of Narcissus. Throughout the movie, Gaston surrounds himself with mirrors or other objects that can reflect is own beauty. As Ovid says of Narcissus, “He looks in wonder / Charmed by himself…Everything attracts him / that makes him so attractive. Foolish boy, / He wants himself, the loved becomes the lover.”


And what a beauty Gaston is! He is physically fit. He has a nice cleft in his chin. I believe his physical beauty is not a point of contention; it is a given. We, the audience must assume he is physically beautiful in order to begin to challenge his moral center.




Needless to say, Gaston is arrogant and conceited. As the villain of the picture, he needs a goal, and what a goal he has: Belle. Gaston might be more sympathetic as character if he actually cared for Belle, but Gaston only views Belle as a supplement to his own grandeur. Gaston cares nothing for Belle, as made obvious when he mocks her books and passion for reading. He makes it very clear that Belle is his goal; in fact, he loves her so much, he points a gun at her in the opening scene.


Gaston tries a number of things to win his “love.” Most directly, he purposes to Belle in her own home. On the assumption that he will receive a “yes” he stages a public spectacle outside the house. To Gaston’s dismay, Belle forces Gaston out of the house with Judo-like finesse and Gaston falls into mud, humiliated in front of his followers. The mud of opaque, not-transparent, and the opposite of the pristine reflective surfaces in which Gaston typically views himself.


After a number of other feats, of which I won’t go into here, Gaston loses his footing. After a respectable attempt, as a villain, to blackmail Belle into marriage, Belle shows Gaston the magic mirror from the Beast’s castle. Belle yells, “SHOW ME THE BEAST!” and the raging Beast is shown to the entire mob. In this scene, the Beast’s physical ugliness in the mirror is a symbolic anti-Narcissus reflection of Gaston’s inner hideousness. Gaston’s face is horrified. This is one time we see Gaston truly broken.


This face, seen below, is the turning point for Gaston’s downfall.



The previous two examples show that Belle is Gaston’s undoing. Like the perfect hero, Belle holds the key to destroying the villain. Both examples show that Belle is able to manipulate the Narcissus myth and show Gaston the aberrations in his own reflection: the mud is opaque, and the mirror reflects not the outside world, but the internal world. One could argue this scene, the magic mirror and the mob scene, is the true death of Gaston. After this scene, Gaston loses sight of his goals and gives full control to his emotions.

In an illogical outburst, Gaston locks Belle in her own house and sets off into the night to kill the Beast. The awkward and somewhat ridiculous part of this act is that Gaston’s goal as the villain was supposed to be courting and marrying Belle. How would imprisoning her get him closer to his goal? He should have stuck with the blackmail plot, but he didn’t. He decided locking Belle in the cellar was a better idea.

I could give Gaston some leeway saying that killing the Beast would take his main romantic competition away from Belle, thus putting Gaston back in the front running to win Belle’s affections, but this is a stretch. There is no evidence that Gaston wants the Beast dead for that reason. While fighting the Beast, Gaston does shout over a thunderclap: “BELLE IS MINE!” but I don’t believe his words. He has passion, to be sure, but does he have affection? If he truly wanted Belle, he would have tried to manipulate her into marriage rather than running off into the woods.

Now, attempting to kill the Beast, Gaston seems more desperate to prove his own self-worth to himself: Narcissus trying to court his reflection. Gaston is no longer a villain trying to impede Belle’s progress; Gaston is simply a broken villain, lost with out a purpose in the movie. At this point in the film, Gaston is only fueled only by his rage—an admirable quality for a villain—but Gaston’s life is about to get even worse.


After shooting the Beast full of arrows and stabbing him, the Beast is about to die. Belle escaped to warn the Beast, but she is too late. As the Beast dies in her arms, Belle whispers, heart-breakingly, “I love you.” Of course, the spell is broken. The weird shooting stars fall, and the Beast turns back into a beautiful man, arguably more beautiful than Gaston himself. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Gaston fell to his death off a cliff while all this is going on.

When Narcissus died, Echo and the others “found nothing” when they searched for his body. “Only a flower with a yellow center / Surrounded with white petals” grew on the bank where Narcissus drowned. Like Narcissus, Gaston fell into oblivion, and a yellow and white flower grew at the site of his death.





The parallels between the Narcissus myth and Gaston the villain help clarify the overarching character development for Gaston as a man, but also as a villain. Narcissus was a fooled to love his reflection. Here, Disney took this idea further by giving their version of Narcissus power and the ability to change other people. Ovid’s Narcissus dies not really affecting anyone else in the myth, but here, in the Disney film, Gaston’s self-infatuation can potentially lead to death and despair, but as a G-rated mythopoetic reconstruction, the Disney Narcissus also dies without really accomplishing any personal goals. In theory, Gaston’s Narcissistic solipsistic self-indulgence is quite frightening; I wonder what might have transpired in a gritty, R-rated version.



Gaston’s physical death is not what makes his ultimate demise so painful. Gaston’s goal was to marry Belle. Of all the Disney villains, Gaston was not even close to this goal. Belle always hated Gaston. He made no forward progress at all, and, in the end, his “killing” the Beast acted as the catalyst for Belle to confess her love and create a more beautiful man than Gaston.


One might argue that Belle already loved the Beast before his stabbing and arrowing, but then why did the spell break only when Belle vocally said the words? The truth is that Belle needed to have to Beast "die" in order for her to discover her feelings fully. Her love was subconscious, and the brink of death forced her affections to the surface, thus breaking the spell. Had Gaston been slightly more patient, had Gaston went to the pub instead of into a rage, the last petal of the magic rose would have fallen, and the Beast would have stayed a hairy brown mass for the rest of his life. Gaston simply had poor timing.

Gaston not only failed in his own goal as the villain, but he played a large role, if not an integral role, in the eventual happiness of his enemies. Gaston failed in all aspects of his life, and, to top it off, he’s in hell.

A Carrot’s Destiny

After visiting my mother, who is apparently on a health food kick, I recently have been pondering the following question:

If I was a vegetable, like a carrot, would I feel cheated out of my destiny if I was processed in a juicer and served as a drink?

I can imagine a Nantes Coreless yelling, “I’m a carrot! I’m crunchy! Bite me, don’t sip me!”

This is not an easy question. Carrot juice is incredibly sweet. My mother gave me a cup or two, and it was so sweet it felt wrong and unhealthful drinking such huge quantities. I had to remind myself that it’s vegetable juice, no worse than V8 or eating a bag of carrots. But that’s just the point, isn’t it? From the carrot’s point of view, I have essentially taken his essence, his nutrients, and disregarded all the fiber, all the pulp. I’ve taken what I’ve wanted, and left his other parts. I’ve consumed him on my terms. It was not symbiosis, but parasitism. I loved him, conditionally.


As a carrot, I would have no destiny; I’m just a long orange taproot. But I’m a man, and I just might have a destiny. I might have a destiny, and I would like to think that whatever and whomever my destiny included, that it would include all parts of me, good and bad. I would not want a juicer destiny!

I would want my destiny, my all-powerful purpose in life, to include everything that makes me “me.” I would want my destiny to embrace my impatience and my boorishness and my insecurity. I would want my destiny to welcome my pathetic skills in geography, math, and science. I would want my destiny to welcome me unconditionally, like a soul mate welcomes its other half. I would want those things, but when my euphoria wears off, I don’t believe in destiny.

On my happier days, I guess I do believe in destiny, but perhaps I’m only happy because I’m doped-up on a fantasy. Destiny is an opiate for my all-too-realistic life.

I always think of Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump. He blamed Forrest for cheating him out of his destiny of dying on the battlefield. Now we all know Lt. Dan went on to get married and have a better life, essentially spitting the face of his destiny, but I know I’m not that lucky. I am not a movie character; my life doesn’t fit into 2-hour chunks. I would love to have a destiny, but I probably don’t have one. I’m just a carrot, waiting for my eventual juicing, my eventual conditional and parasitic "destiny."

Sometimes I pretend though: Maybe a carrot does have a destiny. Maybe I should envy the carrot. Does he not want to be in a fancy salad at Morton’s? Does he not want to be sautéed in extra virgin olive oil? Doesn’t he dream of being that iconic carrot Bugs Bunny nibbles in the all those cartoons? I’d like to think so.

I guess I do envy the carrot. The carrot has endpoints: finite points in a nihilist infinity. My destiny seems more uncertain, more elusive, and, in all likelihood, more fictional.

I’ll Raise a Glass to the Drivel

I was a freshman in college when I found Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. The story was enthralling. But it wasn’t just the plot—although the deformed supermodel and her transvestite road friend were certainly entertaining. The writing style spoke to me. I thought, “My GOD! Someone wrote a novel that sounds and thinks like me!” This novel, like so many other books to so many other people, was not a book: it was an entity, a force with which to be reckoned, an icon. I spent many a lunch or phone conversation describing this book to friends. The phrase “I think you’d dig on it” often fell out of my mouth.

“No matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when a pool of their blood edges up too close” (15).

“I was the picture of calm. I never, never panicked. I saw my blood and snot and teeth splashed all over the dashboard the moment after the accident, but hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly” (50).

Look at that language! Look at those topics! Love. Blood. Betrayal. Solipsism. Self-consciousness. Violence. This book preyed on my sophomoric need for attention and brooding emotions.

I didn’t even have to pull out the text for those quotations; I was so in love with this book, I have a word file on my 6-year-old laptop titled “Rocking with Invis Mon.” Oh my.

I often hear people refer to their favorite books influenced by what I call the “Charlie Syndrome.” Charlie being from Flowers for Algernon: You can’t go home again. I hear people say how ridiculous their ex-favorite books were and how elevated their tastes have now become.

As snobbish as it sounds, I agree. Invisible Monsters is drivel. It catered to my fledgling tastes, and when I leafed through it again recently, the narrated masturbation, sex acts, violence, and emotional brooding seem no more literary than pornography. After a few years have passed since I first read the book, and loved the book, and lived the book, and subjected my friends and family to the plot of the book, I doubt I will ever read it again in its entirety.

But I believe there is more to the Charlie Syndrome than a simple denial of past passions. I often forget that Invisible Monsters lead me to more “Chuck Books” (apparently a genre), and while I was in a store buying more “Chuck Books,” I bought a copy of The Lovely Bones. And I loved Alice Sebold so much, that I went back to buy her memoir Lucky. While I was in store purchasing Lucky, I saw a folded Japanese crane on the cover of When the Emperor Was Divine. And Julie Otsuka’s book is now one of the four books I am analyzing in my thesis discussing Japanese-American Literature.

Perhaps what I’m saying is that I owe Invisible Monsters something more than simply calling it drivel. The book made me love reading. The book made me feel smart and learned. The book gave me a reason to buy more books and join the Border’s Rewards Program and ask for B&N giftcards. Invisible Monsters might be drivel now, but it inspired me at the time. I don’t think people can jump right into Hemingway; they need a spotter to lift a behemoth like that; my spotter was Palahniuk. I couldn’t love Jake and Lady Ashley without Shannon’s self-loathing and self-destructive behavior.

It’s fine to have a Charlie Syndrome moment; in fact, I applaud the self-awareness and growth in readers. But let us not be too hasty. Remark on the ephemeral enjoyment of a novel, but let us not disregard the enjoyment completely. I probably won’t read any more “Chuck Books,” but I still smile supportively, and, more importantly, empathetically when people tell me they are “DYING for Chuck’s next one.”

I’ll drink to that.

Umbrella

I don’t really listen to music by Chris Brown or Rihanna, but I am still aware that they both are powerful figures in society. Their recent trouble involving physical abuse is unfortunate, to say the least. I have been loosely following the story from the initial reports to the leaked images of Rihanna's face, and it got me thinking.

Domestic violence is horribly “under the radar.” I read several sites and talked to several people in the Social Work field, and their specific statistics vary, but there is a trend: only a small minority of physical abuse cases are reported. I’m not a social worker, nor am I a statistician, so I’m not exactly sure what “reported” means, but there is a general consensus that domestic violence is an underreported crime.

Perhaps surprisingly, I’m not going to impugn Chris Brown. There have been many public comments made concerning Brown’s guilt or innocence. Most notably, Kanye West spoke out on Rihanna’s behalf while SNL’s Kenan Thompson took a more neutral stand. Either way, I think the overall focus is wrong. This is not a story about Chris Brown and Rihanna, and this is not a story about the public reaction to said relationship. This is a story about awareness.

Chris Brown is not a god who has fallen; Chris Brown is simply a famous mortal who showed his own mortality.

Chris Brown is a regular man with regular emotions. His anger and his passion consumed him, and he acted out in a rash and criminal manner. I am certainly not defending his actions, but I’m certainly not going to jump onto a soapbox and invest all my energy into a story that is just a fragment of the overall issue. I will not impugn Chris Brown; I will impugn domestic violence.

As Jose Saramago said in reaction to the protests against his book Blindness, “Stupidity doesn't choose between the blind and the non-blind.” I agree; domestic violence doesn’t choose between the “gods” and the mortals.

Whatever the reason, and whatever the context for domestic violence, it boils down to this: One person’s emotional charge overwhelms their inner being and leaks out onto another person in the form of physical aggression. The repugnant act is not Brown beating America’s Sweetheart; the repugnant act is an emotion in one person manifesting itself in the form of violence on another person.

If I choose to be angry or impatient or depressed, that is my choice. But my partner or my friends should not suffer for my flaws. And for that, I impugn Brown’s inability to control his inner self. I also impugn the others who have had momentary lapses in judgment and control.

I’m no better than any of the other people out there. We are the same humans with the same emotions and urges, and we all walk the same line between criminal and passionate. We are not Brown, but we should not cast him out either. I’m sure we could all benefit from a little awareness.

Rihanna was more wise than I gave her credit. Her lyrics of unity and togetherness seem quite fitting.

When the sun shines, we’ll shine together
Told you I'll be here forever
Said I'll always be a friend
Took an oath I'ma stick it out till the end
Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella

Good luck Chris Brown. And good luck Rihanna.

These are some sites I used to learn more about domestic violence.

Next Door: A Santa Clara domestic violence service agency.
http://www.nextdoor.org/

National Domestic Violence Hotline
http://www.ndvh.org/

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
http://www.ncadv.org/

Tragic Hero

If I were a tragic hero, my tragic flaw would probably be my lack of patience. I can't roll cookie dough. I can't knit a scarf. And I certainly can't stand when people don't pull up to the front gas pump.

Notice the big rig on the right side of the picture stopping me from going around this woman, and notice the lack of a car at the front pump. I was pinned in; I had nowhere to go. And if you know Costco gas stations, you know I was pinned in from the rear as well.

With my forced practice in patience, I decided to take this picture.

Now, in the woman's defense, she stopped her car while the car in front of her was still pulling out. If this woman had waited another five seconds, she could have pulled forward, but maybe this woman was in a hurry. Under those circumstances, I would be more understanding. I'll take this as a learning moment; I will be a more-patient person for enduring this, at the time, egregious violation of common sense and courtesy.

Improving myself should not be the only goal though, should it? Shouldn't society also be looking to improve? Should I not ask this women, who may NOT have been in a hurry, please to pull up to the next pump, so that I may also utilize my time wisely? I didn't yell at her, but my passenger riding shotgun certainly got an earful. I should just learn to be more patient. If I were more patient, events like this wouldn't be blog-worthy.

But again, I'm a tragic hero waiting for the knife in my back, so you'll have to wade your way through my immature blog posts.

I'm Oedipus. I'm Hamlet. I'm Macbeth. I'm me.

Full Circle

My grandma and I are hospital mates; we were both patients of the same hospital. Our visits were under different circumstances, but we are technically linked beyond our genetics: we are hospital mates—just 24 years apart. I was being born in the maternity ward, and she is getting blood in the oncology ward.

When I visited my grandma, it was strange to see her receiving another person’s blood through tubes, but, oddly enough, it was stranger seeing her hair matted and tangled from resting her head against a hospital pillow. My grandma always seems to have her hair in order; this oily and flattened bed head looked very out of character. Oddly enough, the IV blood or sagging skin from fatigue did not bother me as much as the hair, the untended hair—the dethroning of a beloved queen.

I sat down next to her bed, and we watched “Wheel of Fortune” together. Despite her being bedridden, the sole source of entertainment, the TV, was electronically snowing all over Vanna White. I felt sad that her procedures were reducing what little hearing she has. At least shows like “Jeopardy” and “Wheel” are largely text-based so an essentially deaf person could still receive enjoyment without knowing what CC means.

At a commercial break, I tried to fill the silence with small talk about how cool it was to get free ice cream; I’m sure that’s exactly what cancer patients want to hear. The cool refreshment of Vanilla in a plastic cup makes my uncontrollable cell mass feel so much better! I might be an adult, but I still don’t understand what true pain and true sacrifice means.

I remained silent in hopes that my echoing feelings of idiocy would disperse. “Wheel” was ending, and visiting hours were over. I told my grandma I would be back to see her again later in the week. She nodded, and her shiny eyes read, “Thanks for coming.”

My grandma has supported me my whole life. She picked me up from school. She signed my pink slip when I pushed a kid at school. She rubbed my stomach through my first bought with constipation. She drove 3 hours to Fresno to spend time with me. She sat quietly at the kitchen table when I decided to switch majors from Bio to English. She welcomed every single one of my girlfriends into her home. She held my hand at her husband’s funeral. She gave years of her life. My grandma has supported me unconditionally and voluntarily, so I already knew the answer to the question I asked as I was leaving her room.

“Were you in this hospital on the day I was born?”

Full Circle.

Choice

A time like this is not a time to read
A magazine
Like People magazine, but sitting here,
Alone, unclear
What happens next for us, these pictures give
Some hope to live
Beyond this yellow-papered waiting room.
She'll be done soon.

Above the pages of celebrities,
I see candy
In a bowl beside a bowl of condoms.
It's so much fun:
Like Halloween as kids can grab the treats
They want and need.
The kid across the way from me gets up
For Reese's Cups
And sits back down across the way amid
The other kids
And me. She could be here for family care,
But I'm aware:
A candy in hand and a sad face
Mean a bad place.

How can a windowed blue line be so curved
To make us swerve
In different directions? We walked the same--
And now unable
To sync our steps, I came here since the choice
Left my dads' voice
For her moms' womb. It's not that she's evil,
She simply fell
The opposite way off the line than I.
She's "girl," I'm "guy."

My selfish hope: the nurse would call her name
Again, again,
And give the chance to walk away concealed--
Aborting the deal--
But the nurse at the desk who took the forms
Opened the door,
And said, "Your turn," and pointed to her womb.
She'll be out soon.

Oncology Ward: Room 4204

On darkest days, I gave you flowers to blue
The raging red within your emerald eyes.
The smallest box could often clear the blame
You passed to me. Your sapphire ring is bright

Because the pinkish scars my absence left
Behind could not be kissed away. In days
Now past, your hopeful smile inspired my trust,
But now, the flowers have wilted, sapphires grayed

Beyond apology. Forgive me, please,
That years have picked the meadows barren, mines
Have lost their gems, and couples burned their peace
On gifts consuming oxygen and time.

In a giftless darkness, my sight is blurred.
With riches gone, accept these priceless words.

Day of Remembrance

At a small ceremony in Japantown, San Jose, CA, I realized that the majority of my knowledge regarding the Japanese Internment Camps comes from books. Farewell to Manzanar. Citizen 13660. No No Boy.

The speeches at the event reminded me of something urgent. I'm a Yonsei. I'm a Yonsei, and my grandma, who was interned at Topaz, is still alive. My grandma lives no more than 30 minutes away from me, and yet I curl up on my living-room couch with When the Emperor was Divine?

I've been relying too much on Internment-Camp literature. Iconic works of literature are spoiling me. People who lived years in Camp reside no more than 2 miles away from me in J-Town, and I would rather read historical fiction?

The literature has been my crutch. I may be writing a thesis on Internment-Camp literature, but I'm a fraud. I'm a coward. I would rather read about the stories from behind the safety of the page than feel the stories from someone who has been cut by barbed wire. I'd rather touch ink than blood.

Past generations don't want to talk about it, and future generations are too busy assimilating. But I'm ready now. I'm ready to listen, Grandma. Tell me a story from your hospital bed. You may not want to talk about it, but it's my job as a Yonsei to massage your memories and to hear these stories.

Okubo and Wakatsuki Houston:
Sit on the shelf; I don't want you two anymore.

I want the real thing.

Grandma:
Tear me with barbed wire. Rub desert sands and winter winds in my sores. I want tetanus and scars and shame too. Share your stories with me. No more books. Just talk to me. I swear I'm ready to listen.

Harmonizing With Shopping Carts

I feel bad for my shopping companions; I love to sing in parking lots. I don't know exactly why I sing only in parking lots. The cars and shopping carts and outdoor ambiance gracefully deafen my attempts at singing verses mostly from pop icons like the Backstreet Boys and Michael Jackson. I wouldn't classify "pop" as my favorite genre, but I can't help but gravitate toward their unabashedly catchy, albeit ephemeral, tunes. After some soul-searching while writing this post, I have come to the conclusion that a parking lot is the only anonymous place for me to unleash my "skill." In a world where our experts tell women to shout "FIRE" instead of "HELP," I sing "I Want It That Way" in the comfort that people simply don't care about other people.

I don't think I sing so loudly that is obnoxious. I sing to myself and maybe my companions. I sing just enough for it to be considered a private concert.

For those of you that know me personally, you can verify that my vocal prowess is substandard at best. I simply don't understand how to use my voice in a musical manner. The only tune I can carry is iTunes. Baseball players encapsulate my definition of pitch. The word "alto" reminds me of my favorite childhood movie "Balto." Music is a foreign language in which, for me, there is no Rosetta Stone. I watch American Idol (I admit it) if only to gaze at the wonderful sounds emanating from these contestants. Such rich flavors wafting out of such tiny throats!

I don't know how to sing. I never took and will never take formal singing lessons. Even at the moment of my writing this, I still don't fully understand if I have an anatomical flaw that precludes me from singing charmingly or if I simply lack skill.

I don't think I want to understand my failing. This type of ignorance is bliss; I am not condoning all ignorance--just the ignorance that is amazingly melodic.

Singers understand something beautiful that I do not. Their everyday skill blinds me, and I am content to sustain post-lingual deafness when they release their textures. I understand I will never be a Freddie Mercury or a Michael Jackson or even a Nick Carter, and I have great respect for all singers.

On my most recent parking-lot concert, I thought about all the other non-singers going into Costco.

Every person must have a skill that deafens society when they unleash their inner potential. Every person out there is a Luciano Pavarotti in some skill or another. Every person I pass on the street, every person I angrily impugn when I'm in a bad mood--all these people are masters of something about which I know nothing. And I, in turn, am the same. Every person is my teacher, my equal, and my student. My relationship to you, reader, is as dynamic and rich and wonderful as Stevie Wonder's voice.

We all heard that there is a leprechaun's pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The charming aspect of that tale is that, as a child, you could never find the end of the rainbow. Now, as a semi-educated adult, I figure with a walkie-talkie, a mathematician, and a GPS system, I could find the technical end of a rainbow, but I already know the result: emptiness. Not even an empty pot awaits. There is no pot. There is no mystery. There is no sonorous oblivion to rupture my eardrums.

I don't understand scales or three-part harmonies or vibrato. I choose to leave that pot of gold undiscovered. I'll still sing as I push my shopping cart along uneven cement. I can harmonize with a shopping cart only because I don't understand what harmonies are--and I don't really want to. I'll just have some fun. Must we only indulge ourselves in our skilled activities? Can't I sing like Aretha even if I can't sing like Aretha? If you hear me in a parking lot one day, please, reader, join me in jam session--or tell me to shut the hell up.

I Wouldn't Mind a Stain

A local coffee shop opened today. Roy's Station empowers the surrounding neighborhood by giving its people a place to "hang out." Other establishments in the immediate area are often too small, too busy, or too sticky to be considered a laid-back place to drop a few bucks and chat with friends.

I don't drink coffee. A CNN.com article told me to drink coffee quickly as slow sips re-coat one's teeth eventually leading to stains. That article has since turned me off from coffee. I need my white teeth. I'm not the most attractive gentleman at the table; I wouldn't consider myself the Fabio of my generation, and I need all the help I can get--white teeth included.

2 friends, 8 acquaintances, and I ventured into the bitter cold and sampled this new vendor. Attending Roy's grand opening today, I realized that I don't particularly like coffee, and I don't particularly like sitting with people I don't know very well. It's nothing personal; I swear!

I dislike the setting, not the people. These people are perfectly lovely people. These people are not social troglodytes; my acquaintances each have friends and significant others who, I'm sure, love them dearly, but as far as I am concerned, my solipsism does not afford me the luxury of actually enjoying the company of, what are essentially, 8 strangers.

Today, drinking coffee was not about hot water mixed with coffee grounds; it was about interacting socially.

I am friends, not mere acquaintances, with about 2 people of the 10 people in attendance. It's a stubborn positive feedback loop: I don't know the other 8 people that well, and, in turn, we sit far away from each other. Conversations with such large groups usually become divided based on simple proximity. I never meet the other 8 and they never meet me because we sit on opposite sides of the table. How pathetic is the Social Fabric! We might know names, but we don't know the darker sides our smiles. I stain my teeth for 2 friends and 8 strangers.

I don't actually know why I attended this evening. Maybe it was to support the neighborhood organization. Maybe I simply wanted a warm drink after a cold day. Or maybe I simply buckled under the social pressures to attend a function outside of my comfort zone. Whatever the reason, I find my cheeks sore from smiling and pretending to participate in conversations outside of my understanding. I nod politely all the while thinking of something to say to my friends that wouldn't interrupt the conversational flow of the other 8 people. I find myself jealous when my 2 friends laugh with the other 8 as if my friends are being unfaithful. I feel insecure when my friends enter another sphere and leave me behind. I nod politely, but I'm thinking of ways to bring my 2 friends back.

The joke is on me. My 2 friends have known the other 8 longer than they have known me. I am the rookie in the group. I'd rather horde my friends than share them. I'd rather live in a world where I can control current friends rather than make new ones. What a desperate and childish perspective! I often write of teenage angst as part of my past; I am a fraud. My angst is brooding; my angst is present. I may not scream my flawed emotions anymore, but I certainly nurture them.

Maybe I just need more practice being in social situations. Maybe my friends didn't pressure me into attending--maybe they are just throwing me a buoyant biscotti, so I won't drown in my antisocial coffee brewing in the corners of social mores.

My teeth are not white because of the CNN article; my teeth are white because I hate drinking coffee.

Roy's opened today. To all you 8: Keep inviting me for those $3 drinks. Maybe this is the just the coffee shop I need to stain my teeth.

I Don't Play Them, I Remember Them

I play video games. I don't think of myself as a "nerd," and this post certainly is not a typical post about video games. The outside world looks in and sees a grown man dumping hours into what is essentially a toy. There are certainly more lucrative things to be done, but I know no other way of living my life than relaxing and memorizing the feeling of playing video games.

The memories of my life are contextualized by a pastime in which I still participate today.

I remember the day my grandparents gave me a Super Nintendo and how happy they looked. Actually, I'm lying: I can't remember how they looked when they gave me the system. I wish that topic sentence was true; I want to be self-aware and charmingly nostalgic. But I'm just superimposing memories onto memories, a smiling grandfather onto the memory of the SNES. I'm rewriting my memories to include a more adult version of myself, so I don't need to admit that my moments of my past are solipsistic and selfish rather than aware and generous.

I remember a day with my father where I acted obedient and respectful up until the moment he caved and bought me "The Adventures of Batman and Robin." After I received my bounty, the shouting and the wildness returned. Maybe the emotions simply overwhelmed my 10-year-old self, but, more likely, I simply dropped the facade once I got what I wanted.

At the end of the summer before college, "Mario Kart 64" was the last refuge for me and my high school girlfriend. The boy who chose a college in Northern California and the girl who chose a college in Southern California put the tears and teenage angst on hold for a Grand Prix Mushroom Cup match on 150cc. "Mario Kart 64" was the pathetic life support system of a dying relationship, but perhaps the fantasy of the kart racer let me live just a few more weeks in my own juvenile euphoria.

I took my Game Boy Advance with me to the fifth floor of the University Medical Center and played "Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced" as my grandfather lived his last days. Even though he was conscious, and I could have asked him any question in the world, I chose to visit Ivalice and power-up my characters in a video game I misplaced since that time.

Despite the un-sexy atmosphere, I confessed to a girl while my friends were in the same room playing "Metroid Prime" on a big-screen TV.

I became interested in a girl because she grew up with three brothers and said she knew about Billy and Jimmy. It turns out she was lying, but I was enamored by the time I found out.

Today, my favorite games would be classified as "Halo 3," "Left 4 Dead," "Call of Duty 4," and "Gears of War 2." These games are, for the most part, first-person shooters--a genre I typically despise because I get motion sickness. But first-person shooters are the only games made that have the Online-multiplayer capabilities for me and my brother to meet every night of the week and "hang out." These ridiculously violent games are the only peacefully sanctuary for us. The hostility of a phone call is too much for us to handle; we need to meet in a post-apocalyptic warzone to have our tranquil conversations about how our lives are changing since he moved over 500 miles away. We have our real-world conversations behind sandbags, hiding from zombies and plasma grenades.

These memories are just shards of my past often hidden away from my self-searching. Video games are physical--they are carts or CDs or DVDs. They don't weather or dull with time; they don't manipulate and lie; they just sit wait for me to play them again. I might not always remember I lost my first love on the same day I beat Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts, but that disc is still on my shelf, ready to be put back into my PS2. That is why I don't sell my games.

Darkness

I was slowly sipping a pearl-less Mango Milk Tea reading Danticat's Krik? Krak! in a February morning so sunny that, without my sunglasses, the whiteness of the page physically hurt as I struggled simultaneously to squint and read my text. I was wearing a black shirt, so the warmth of the sun seemed to diffuse throughout my entire torso. It being "winter," I was not sweating in the usual summer fashion, but dampness slowly leaked its way into my perceptions.

In the unusual warmth of this early-February morning, I received an unexpected surprise. A man slowly approached me, and as a result, advanced an arc of shadows over my page. The eclipse of light tore me away from Port-au-Prince, and within the length of a paragraph, I was reading the man more than my book.

He sat down next to me and smiled. "Korean?" He asked. And like all encounters that are birthed in such a rapid and unwarranted manner, I did not comprehend his question. He repeated his inquiry. I replied that I was another type of Asian. It was then that I noticed the leather-bound book about the size of a travel book neatly resting beneath his two palms. A Bible. I now understood the affront. What arrogance to sit down next to a complete stranger and interrupt someone obviously reading!

After some banal questioning about my major and some unsolicited information about his Church, he asked me to read a few passages out of the Bible. I know enough about the Bible to be competitive in a game of Trivial Pursuit, and while the passages he selected sounded familiar in tone and style, the words were new. I'm not sure why I humored him. Maybe it was because he looked like my late grandfather.

The hospital bed did not seem to accommodate nor suit a man of his stature. The radiation on his prostate left him noticeably skinnier than in his pre-cancer days, but no amount of cell-destroying medical treatments would flatten his square jaw, perfect for a chin strap of a samurai's helmet; he was a honorable warrior born in the 20th Century. His head, usually shiny from sweat earned while working in the garden, now looked more dull as if a make-up artist applied powder to his balding forehead. The tubes in his arms and nose and penis did not make him look any less round, short, or strong. These last images were such a small percentage of how I knew him, but the contrast of darkness and cancer encroaching on the light and life has been etched into my brain.

I do not remember the passage I read. Something from John and something from Genesis about the light of Jesus and the darkness of Satan. Whenever I interact with someone from a Christian faith, I am often uncomfortable by the frequent and often spoken word "Christ." Like many people I use the word "Jesus!" as an exclamation, but the word "Christ" has a much harsher sound, a much stronger K sound, and a much stranger connotation. Being raised in Agnosticism, and reading more books about Atheism than Deism, the simple fact that this conversation even occurred was out of the ordinary for me.

I was losing interest. My mind wandered to certain excuses I could use to leave and find a new bench: one equally sunny but farther away from evangelism. I inserted my post-it bookmark, the sticky side now smooth from use, and I closed my book ready to leave. I think he sensed my departure, and he quickly grabbed my hand, asking for one more minute to pray with me.

I lost most of his words in a flash of my other memories of pastors and priests Gatling-gunning God and Light and Dark phrases into the air. But one section stood out. I can't quite remember the wording, but he said that there is a lot of darkness in the world, and if we can live our lives in a better way than yesterday, our lives will always be better than the day before.

My arm tingled a little as my muscles were flexed from the awkward physical contact with a man most likely triple my age. Those people on TV who faint from the touch of God perhaps were just too nervous and too clenched from being filmed. Or perhaps there was, as the pastor said, "a small miracle between the two of us."

I stood up and left, thanking him for the conversation and he returning his gratitude for my willingness to read from the Bible. I walked away thinking that if all evangelism and missionary work were so open-minded, I might not be so angry about the attempted spread of religions to other countries. I don't necessarily agree with the scripture part of his talk, but I do agree that there is a lot of darkness in the world.

I swear. I'm angry. I'm sad. I use the Internet for less than noble purposes. I'm insecure about myself. These are my absences of light. These are my contributions to the void in society.

I do want to live my life better each day. He had good intentions just trying to make people happier and brighter; perhaps it was a form of Mills' Utilitarianism. Maybe the pastor wasn't as open-minded as I give him credit for now, but I still like to think I could try to remove some of my darkness even if I don't name it "sin."

I draw the line in the sand when people start trying to define darkness for each person. One person's darkness is very different from another person's. My life is my own; I have my own shadows and flares.

I want to be happy. I want to be brighter than yesterday. The pastor might call it Jesus Christ, and I might call it a chance meeting between two people, but either way, I feel slightly happier than I did yesterday. That's a start.

Scanning Hal Jordan

In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight

Let those who worship evil's might,

Beware my power... Green Lantern's light!

I never knew why the Green Lantern Oath sounded so wonderful, but during a restless class session, I scanned these famous words and realized they are in perfect Iambic Tetrameter. The rhythm is in my bones.

Before the true formalists call me out on my scanning, I would like to acknowledge the fact that I am considering "power" in the fourth line to be pronounced "pow'r" with the appropriate elision to maintain the meter.

Even with that slight transgression, I admire the meter of the Green Lantern Core. A well-written Oath.

Please Define Judo Rhapsode

Judo: The soft method is characterized by the indirect application of force to defeat an opponent. More specifically, it is the principle of using one's opponent's strength against him and adapting well to changing circumstances.

Rhapsode: This word illustrates how the oral epic poet would build a repertoire of diverse myths, tales and jokes to include in the content of the epic poem. Thus it was possible, through experience and improvisatory skills, for him to shift the content according to the preferred taste of a specific audience of a location

From: Wikipedia

I know it is considered taboo to quote from Wikipedia, but the Oxford English Dictionary did not provide entries for either word that captured the correct essence. To all the scholars: my apologies.