Let's give it a go with one of my favorite authors.

via wikipedia.

In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I'd also recommend reading this, How to Write With Style, by Kurt Vonnegut. 

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

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The above mentioned advice has nothing to do with my GRE stories. In fact my GRE stories probably go against most of the said above. Good Real Effort (GRE)  I wonder if this is really my way of studying or really just a way to condone my procrastination. Anyways I decided to make the GRE stories real life (much harder) instead of made up pseudometaphors and parallels about themes of what I see and feel in life. 

I did see a grave in rice paddies though.

There was once a time when photos did not exist. There was no way to capture a moment in time, with all its truth and honesty. Mendacious paintings trying to do a photo's job obstructed the truth. But photos today fall in the same lines as august, affected constructed paintings of the wealthy. They are glibs that skewed reality and made others invidious, wanting a life that is really not what they think it to be. 

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Today I found out sort of life changing current news from a few friends. All in one day! I am very happy for each of them. 

I am a big believer of "friendship vibes" that is when I think about a friend and miss them, they suddenly pop into my life in some way or form.

My friend Ai recently entertained the idea of me living in Austin, Texas. She or maybe Lillian, can't remember talked about a friend who used to live in New York, and went/moved to Austin and was blown away by the music scene. Que Divertido! She said she will be blogging Austin cafe scene and whatever not to convince me to move there. Living costs are really low too!

I really just want a life, where I have friends, family and see a lot of shows and art - and to end human trafficking. I've got a few years to accomplish that.

My California goal is to learn spanish pero quiero hablar espanol muy. Ir a la playa y escuchar y talk with the community.  I think this is a very doable endeavor.  Might as well up the anty with the number of languages I can speak to 4. 

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and now random pictures in my computer to delight the reader, in no particular sense:

A temple in Vietnam. It's a fake tree with REAL BIRDS living in it. Talk about living in denial. Literally.

I did this circle art activity with the girls at the shelter, where we had to complete each other's drawings. I'm not too sure if that is an upside v-neck or saggy boobs that reach into my arms. The likeness is uncanny.

This photo looks familiar.  I guess I wasn't nostalgically staring into the distance and reflecting. Like all facebook profile pictures, they are skewed reality. I was just sitting next to my mama on the Melbourne subway yappin' my ass off. Good job brother for capturing that.

The first time I ate a chicken after seeing it alive a few hours ago. GUILT. 

This popped up on my facebook (when I was on it) and I laughed out loud. Sally is now one ocean closer to me!! =)

Productivity at its best. "Hey Sally how's the roller coaster ride?" "Really peaceful, relaxing" "Hey Tam how's the nice hot weather on the beach? "The air conditioner is making me cold" "Kim how's the fishes?" "There's a surprising amount of oxygen down here"

Touch. The. Dinosaur. I really miss those holey jeans.

This is my last show in the states. Metric! God we're sooooo legit. This is after walking past the metric t-shirt hawkers.  Aline is my friend the the far left. She's uber legit,  can dance AND she lives in Kansas. That probably calls for a upgrade to uber legit midwesterner (If my California geography is correct) I love midwesterners.

I learned how to eat these spicy critters. I certainly feel legit.

The clock doesn't stop beating.

A note from one of the girls in our culinary vocational program.

While her heart won't stop ticking, despite having felt it kicked, dropped, and pulled. It doesn't stop. And while the dog outside continues to sniff the ground as if there may be something hidden underneath the flat hard concrete, she glances out her window to see if the palm trees want to say something. They don't. They just want to sway. The room she sits in is undecorated. Sprinkled with crayon stains from forgotten memories and furniture that is too big for the space given, the room longs for a time when his walls used to be blue and furniture few. 


Now his walls were white. Achingly white. Not even a pretty kitshe painting to cover his bare walls. He longed for an affected Mona Lisa or  Monet.  Heck what about a picasso, a khalo, a pretentious warhol, a damn mysterious white flower among blue ones, a starry fucking night,  I don't care. Just cover me, please.


She thought she heard something. The dog was still sniffing, but still could not find what he wanted. 
The palm trees now stopped swaying. A car drives by. And because the rigid frames of the neighboring houses seemed to be at odds with the wild weeds that kept invading perfectly kept lawns, she decided to turn on the television instead, drowning out the sounds of the hours and minutes and seconds that seem to mindlessly beat towards some forgotten time.


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Lately, I've been day dreaming about southern California. My workload for some reason has increased tremendously and I find myself in the office past 9:00 pm almost every night. All for the cause of preventing human trafficking in Vietnam. Since I'm a volunteer, I essentially work for free. I am also very excited for my move back. I know it's going to be really boring and may be tough in the beginning. My little ol' 20 something year old car doesn't work anymore (I checked when I came back) and I will have to find a way to transport myself to places.

I am now content with anything that is in front of me. This is a very "releasing" feeling. Uplifting, amazing, happy type of feeling for me.  This doesn't mean that I don't get sad. Also, I'm going to try to get a job where my aunt works, a Mental Health clinic that is spread throughout southern California. This will help me explore whether that type of direct clinical work is something I want to do. I think I will learn A LOT from it.

They collapse, and she falls.

And sometimes somewhere in the middle of long stalks of spiteful weeds and tilted cement we find something that we thought we had lost. Floating along the lines of questions and confusion, she finds herself in a place familiar. Familiar because when she stands there time lets her know that he will not wait for her, a feeling ever so similar to a halted beat. Because suddenly a peculiar realization surfaces, one that is mixed with a dizzy cloud of the past and fictional memories. It is painful. The seeded fruits wilt to its side while the toes of children remain shoeless, unprotected and unsafe.

Then the wind decides to whisper so she dreams. The pathway seems to narrow itself, slicing the wind as it tries to escape. The walled windows gray from the miserable air of contempt and regret seem to stand upon itself in order to find what little light the surroundings had left. The smiles that remain in the small town are but of the echoes of children, too naive to realize that they soon will be unable to find that place of ease that currently filled them.

I delighted in the fact that he watched over souls.

The graves keeper kept quiet and followed. The musty sun was trying telling me that he once witnessed my 12 year old mother drive a car through the rice paddy fields with kids in the backseat. He hoped that she would not fall in. And while he was trying to talk to her, he now felt a distance.  He continued to follow. It was a type of distance two childhood friends feel when they move away from each other and see each other. Voices familiar become watered. I think the dirt roads were also trying to tell me something, but I couldn't quiet hear clearly. Our wheels barely noticed, having gone through on nice flat cemented roads. Hidden underneath, the bumpy road whispered to me, that my dad once ran through it not knowing the events the future held. The road did not know he would not see my dad for more than 30 years.

And as he crept closer, my attention was finally caught. Distracted by the sun and the dirt roads, I had not noticed that he was there. I read the "Noi Quy" (rules) of the cemetery. The words foreign. A man of calm, he wore a washed out one piece uniform precariously holding a cigarette in his mouth. Maybe so the ghosts can identify him. I had found myself in a cemetery to the left of Ba Temple in Chau Doc, a very famous Buddhist temple with devout followers who during a certain time of year make their way there, hundreds and thousands of people go to Chua Ba every year pouring our their struggles, hopes, and dreams. She listens. He follows. The sun and road tire.

We enter the cemetery after we convince our mom that she should find her grandmother's grave. Having made it here after hours and miles of travel with a plane, bus, and car I told her your grandmother is going to be angry if you don't see her as we were just outside the gates. My mother did not remember the sun. He was foreign to her. It was a small cemetery, consisting of Chinese people. Like her connection to the sun, she could not remember where the grave of her grandmother was. We looked and looked, and I stood there rather helpless since I could not read Chinese, I decided that the sun, dirt, and graves keeper could keep me company.

He seemed to have dust on him. The kind of dust that won't wash off. His skin was dark and folded, the sun too familiar with him. He followed us into the cemetery without telling him who he was, but he immediately offered help in trying to find the grave. Modest, he revealed that he watched over the cemetery."I look over this place, I know that TeoChow people are on the left and Hanh people are on the left." After talking to him, we told him a family member's name and he knew which grave it was. It's this one and the other one way in the back. He knew all the graves. I was fascinated that this was his life. In fact a tad delighted that he was the constant presence among souls long gone, and that he spent most of his days with the souls of graves. Stories tucked underneath cement he would never hear. However, I would imagine that watching over the graves, one would piece together stories as relatives came in and out paying their regards. Moms, Children, Dads, Uncles and Aunts sparsely make up the identity of the soul he watched over.

We asked him to help our family take a picture with my great grandmother, but he advised that taking pictures in three was not a good idea, that it was bad. He was superstitious, naturally. We thanked him for watching over the cemetery. And as we left, our wheels driving over the dirt road, I couldn't help but think that another piece of the puzzle was given to him, as he tried to piece together the stories of souls.