Words are fun to play with.

Called mama for mother's day. I tell her I found old Vietnamese records from the 1940's to 1970's. She tells me that back in the day everything was recorded live, not by a machine and not in separate parts. The guitarist, the drummer, the singers, they all had to be there. I was delighted by this little piece of information. She asks me how I'm going to play the records. I said daddy had one. I hope he still has it. The sounds that come off those records are beautiful, archaic, lost.  She then goes on to tell me about her purchases at Kohl's yesterday.

I spoke to my grandma in Vietnamese for the first time today. We had a full conversation that lasted maybe 5 minutes, but this is the longest ever in my life. I asked her what she was doing, she said she was cooking Bun Ca but a special kind from Chau Doc. I told her that  Bun Ca in Long Xuyen didn't taste so good. I asked who she was cooking it for. She listed it off for me. It was nice being able to speak to a woman whose taken care of you since you were little for the first time. She yelled at me really bad once when I took her lipstick and drew it all over my hands. I remember trying to wash it off as she was yelling at me. I ran into my uncles room.  Love right there. I usually call my grandpa only, so she was very surprised to get a phone call from me. Her voice a bit older than a few years ago, I can see her gray hairs. But still has cheerful and fluffy as she has always been. She tells me how the other day she went to eat sushi with my cousin Rebecca and I ask her about her upcoming trip to France. She is going for about 20 days. Leaving on July 4th and coming back around July 26th.  I'm really excited for her. I tell her I really want to go. She entertains the idea for a little bit before realizing that I won't return until the end of August. I try to tell her in the most simplest terms that Joseph (my cousin) read something that I wrote my work in Vietnam and he's doing good too. She laughs and sounds happy about it. She says something about us cousins doing good together.

I talk to my aunt who I call Mommy, appropriate day to call her. She just awoke because last night she went to see a music show. One of her favorite things to do. Mine as well.  We talk about Vietnam and the people we know. I update her on how people are doing. She talks to me about her daughter Rebecca who bought her a pretty black purse for mother's day since she now has a job as a volleyball coach. She's proud. I like listening to her talk. She always talks with so much passion and knowledge. In fact, I like to listen to all the women in our family talk. It's actually a pass time of mine when I was little and well into highschool.

Whenever I would hear my mom get on the phone with my grandma at 9:00 pm because minutes were free then, I sat around and listened because this was the only way I could really get to know them, by listening. I couldn't speak the language they spoke over the phone but I can damn well listen to it.

Happy Mother's Day mama, mommy, and abo. I miss you.

---

I realized that if I combine my love for story writing and gre words, I will remember them better! Get your dictionaries out. I've also been reading Kurt Vonneget's Slaughter House Five - maybe I'm influenced by it.


"The cockles of Billy's heart, at any rate, were glowing coals. What made them so hot was Billy's belief that he was going to comfort so many people with the truth about time. " - Slaughter House Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.


20 words chosen at random:

Her hoarding idiosyncrasies were beginning to carve a place between her implacable urges of unrequited love and her hyperbolic tendency to express her love for strangers after a few drinks. She was a mess. Casual conversations with strangers became a rather grievous event. She had unfortunately become a garrulous parrot. It didn't make sense. She was "happy" with work, as happy as a 20 something single woman can be. She was liberal or rather voted for Obama on accident when she was distracted by the handsome young man in the booth next to her, was your average impious church attendee, attending church only when her mom reminded her to, and was an impetuous shopper having just purchased a $200 pen because it was pretty? Surprisingly she felt stuck, in an impasse unable to overcome her inability to satisfy herself with material goods. Fucking pen. 

There was something inchoate inside of her, she felt disorganized despite her three separate work stacks. TO DO. IN REVIEW. COMPLETE. Three simple categories to make sense of her mundane shifting of papers, documents, folders, excel sheets, word documents. She lived by these three categories unconsciously. Yet, she knowingly kept a fourth category at the bottom third drawer to the left. Undetected by the average passerby or nosy gossiper, the achingly plain brown forth drawer was where she garnered her growing collection of bread crust. It started as her need to husband food scraps so she could have a snack throughout the day, but it escalated. The drawer full of bread crust comforted her. At least that was absolute. At least she had control over that forth category. This is not a legerdemain, I'm telling the truth, I swear I am. Maybe a guile, but definitely not a legerdemain.

On Friday nights she found herself in stiff imperturbable rituals. 5:00 pm get off work. 6:00 pm get home after commute. 7:00 pm shower after doing nothing 8:00 pm attempt at fancy dinner/food while being frugal 8:22 pm realize that that's impossible and opt for frozen tv dinner 9:00 pm so exhausted, facebook 11:40 pm what the heck. 12:45 pm knock out, feeling rather bummed at the night's lack of fortuitous events

Repeat Saturday and Sunday too. She knew she would blight any chances of having friends if she went to the bars. She often behaved fatuously unable to control her emotions, she could be found in the corner crying to some poor fellow who thought she was cute. Lethargic after her tv dinner she shifts into unreachable dreams. Fucking pen. She writes in her dreams.

What does it really mean to have patience?

If you measure people's capacity for patience I think you learn a lot about them, not everything but a lot.

People who state things rather "matter of factly" I think are people who are incapable of acknowledging they may be wrong. This is how A is, and A will be like that because I said so.

If you think about it, nothing we say can truly be fact, absoluted, definite. How can something so complicated be reduced to something a single human utters? Sometimes I can't express this to people, because well, it's complicated

---

In order to help me study for my GRE's I am going to use 10 GRE words picked at random in the following paragraph:


Sometimes I can feel the stagnation of America across oceans, through the voices, emails, and g-chat pings of people, there is something that is still and heavy that lingers in the background, every so quiescently. Maybe it's their inability to understand what I've learned in the last 2 years of my life abroad. Maybe it's my tendency towards taciturn expression. Maybe it's distance. Broken into routine, their myopic lives have little that challenge them. And when I talk about challenge I'm not talking about the oblique challenges that some tend to make up these days, shifting the blame to excuses that aren't very valid and skew the honest to god core truth.

"My iphone doesn't work"
"Stupid waiter didn't get my order right"
"You live too far"
"I don't have time"
"I'm tired"
"Gas is expensive"

What I say to this, is that life can be much worse. Trust me. After traveling, and seeing how others live and how people are. Things can be much worse. My prescient decisions on where to go are knowing that with displacement and removal I tend to learn much more than if I stayed in one place. I know this. I stayed for 13 years of my life in the safe quiet Ontario, and I was stagnate but my dad took me on trips to see most of the U.S. I appreciate that only now. My experience there would set stage for several years of movement. My job itself requires me to move an incredible amount. I ride my bike to places, I spend at least 12 hours of travel almost every week. I know this is possible if there is a will, it's possible - no one can tell me I am too far, if I spent the last 1.5 years traveling for 10 hours for friends. Time is only as valuable to you as you use it. In our lives we have a lot of hours, how do you use it? Do you use it on facebook? Do you use it to inspire? Do you use it with technology? Do you use it to rest and revitalize yourself? Do you use it to seek acknowledge-ment or do you use it to acknowledge others?

What do you remember?
What were your proudest moments and what were your saddest moments?
What made you most happy?
 What left you satisfied? What left you fufilled?

Ask yourself what you value. Certain movements have given me a proclivity for certain values. I appreciate movement and displacement and what it forces me to learn, what it allows me to learn. Yet, I think its something more, if I dare be so audacious to say so. Something that is born inside individuals through experiences, irreplaceable, and most of the time incomprehensible.

Lately, and I know I shouldn't, but I get disappointed. I cannot put my finger on it yet, but I am disappointed. Although I speak about a will, a certain prudence, there is also the issue of money, which for many will be a deciding factor for many things, it plays a big role in my life but it should not be the only role. Don't let it limit you when it doesn't have to.

Some people in my life don't quiet understand this. And that's understandable. Sometimes I want to upbraid my friends for not understanding, for being lazy, for not being able to value certain things in life as they should. But that would be useless.

Now as I navigate through this rather nascent stage of my life I know the clock is ticking folks. At the very least, don't forget that. We still have plenty of time though.

I've been having a series of strange dreams.

It leaves me exhausted when I awake into reality. It's like both worlds are keeping me awake, sleepily navigating reality, I remember what I can, absorb what I can, do what I can.

Lately the words of "meaning of life" have been surfacing. I'm not sure why, but I suppose the combination of exhaustion and work and maybe some stress have something to do with that. Stress. The constant stress of trying to convey my thoughts clearly to the external tires me. I think it tires me more than I would like to admit.

Today I talk to friends about "shifting blame" if the whole world can just suck it up, admit they're wrong, then maybe we would all just get along. But since the "downfall of man was that he was once a child" I suppose this will never be.

I have gray bags under my eyes. I wonder if they will go away once appeared.

"If the accident will..."

Movies I recently watched and you should too!

There are a lot of I's in this entry.

I was going to write an entry about washed dreams and goodness, but for some reason never mustered the energy to complete it nor press the button to "publish post."

I for some reason was researching resource mobilization and fund raising strategy websites to get better at my work as the August date closes in. With exciting new changes and staff members the momentum has built with the development work of our organization and I'm really excited to learn from all the people that surround me.

I still have lots to learn. I realized that I don't really have the tools or knowledge to fully engage in my development officer role, and rely mostly on people pushing me to meet with donors, or written reports and grants.

I must speak with a louder voice. Literally and figuratively. I suppose my 4' 11" self can only muster a voice that people next to me can hardly hear. I wonder when that started to happen, I think my soft voice really took a turn when I first came to Vietnam.

I lost my voice and now it doesn't seem to exist. Especially since I had to learn a new language. I became voiceless.

The language of development I am just beginning to grasp. Didn't even realize it until now, but I didn't know the language nor do I know how to effectively utilize it to produce outputs of success and progress.

Thinking on my feet. That's what I need to do. Absorbing information, taking it in, processing it quickly, but then bringing it back out with measurable successes and goals. That is how most of the world works. I wonder if my creativity will get washed away from this. I used to think that you know. I felt that policy washed the creativity out of me. I felt that chemistry washed the creativity out of me. I felt that biology did as well.

But maybe I can make use of what is given to me and find creativity in that. Keep it alive. As it will probably always be inside me. If only I can connect art and creativity with the present but sometimes a sleepiness and reality over comes me. I wonder when the two will connect.

With the random turn of events, while researching development/fundraising strategy, I stumbled upon Taoist websites and liked the quotes I found:

"The soul is what we are."

"The spirit is a soul in motion."

"The ego is the sheepdog of our spirit."

"Open windows within life/ Discover your soul."

"In the end the best answer is no answer."

I don't have much to say about them, but interesting. Sometimes Taoism beliefs echo my own thoughts. I've always liked that.


---

Just write.

---


Sometimes, I realize that thinking about the future will get you no where, while day dreaming about the good things of the past will also only give you fleeting happiness. Present time rarely gets attention. There is no way to reflect on present time, nor to predict present time, so sometimes living in the present gets neglected. You can only live in the present. You cannot reflect nor predict the present. There is no way.

You know I used to be really smart. Like super straight A smart. I used to not know anything outside of being straight A smart. My life was what I was given, so in exchange I became the best with what I was given. I particularly went above and beyond in any type of project that required art. Since I wasn't allowed to go outside, I made the best of what I could inside, I made the best of what I could with what I had. Challenges were overcome. I cried a lot in the privacy of my bed. It was the only place I knew I could cry and no one would see. I was unhappy and sad that all I was good at was straight A smart. That was all I saw.

The bottom right hand pink drawer on the bottom of my bed is where I kept all the papers I ever had. I never threw paper away. Only if it was too small to be cut again. I accumulated a good amount after attending a printers convention with my dad. So many free samples of papers. All kinds of colors. Pink, green, pastels, neon ones, textured ones, christmas ones. All kinds. I kept them all.

The bottom right hand pink drawer on the bottom of my bed housed my creativity. I think it's still there actually. Stored away, warm I hope. If you open it today, I still have paper there. That drawer housed all my creativity. Now that I've left home, with no drawer, I think I feel a bit lost with my creativity. No longer contained in school assignments or birthday cards, my creativity was free to go wherever it wanted. It went somewhere alright. I just don't really know where it went.

I look forward to returning home.


---

subtle rain that falls on a soft bunny that has the tenacity of a phoenix

Tree of Life

From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin, straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus (Platypus) or Lepidosiren (South American lungfish), which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.

– Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

I talked to my grandpa today.

He's always really happy to hear from me. Grandpa always is. He recounts his journey to New York for me, when I ask him where he put his photos. He talks a bit about flying on Air France to New York, and living in Straten Island with 7 children and my grandma. 

She wore two pants and two shirts. It was so cold. Everyone already started school. But then my friend invited me to see California. I went to long beach and ate crab. I was there for 15 days, and when I went back to New York I moved my whole family to California. I picked up the entire family when I went back and we hopped on the greyhound bus for three days.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

He mentions to me how he liked the poem that's written at the base of the Statue of Liberty. He said it in Vietnamese to me, it sounded more beautiful that way - something like "Let's give a home/refuge for those that seek it/ to the poor." Grandpa climbed all the steps to the top of her head. I said I did that too, but then he said back then there was no elevator. It was nerve racking, climbing those stairs.

I climb stairs. I climb stairs almost every day in my house in Long Xuyen. I never had stairs in my house growing up. When I was little I really wanted a two story house with stairs so bad. I don't know why. I suppose it was more so I wanted a perfect looking house just like on Full House. A one story house was not a perfect looking house.

"Mama, why didn't you buy a house with two stories? I really want one."

"You can't even keep a one story house clean, how are you going to clean a two story house?"

Inquiry curtailed.

I then wonder for a quick minute what would of happened if my mom stayed in New York. What would happen to me? What kind of person would I be? Then I realized that I wouldn't exist. Seeing that my dad was at the bus stop in California waiting for my mom.

"Yes your dad was waiting at the bus stop! Then shortly after they got married" Grandpa chuckled. And then the thought that a simple three day move to California was the reason why I exist in this world came to my mind.

My existence, based on many things of course, is seeped in migratory movements. Maybe that's why I was born to move and not be in one place.

My dad of course kept us moving, I mean I lived and grew up in southern California, but we saw a lot. We traveled a lot in a car.

Maybe that's why I find comfort in staring out of a window of a moving vehicle. I've been doing it all my life.

Now as I look into graduate schools, and my next "move" in life, I'm looking into schools in the East Coast, because that's where the top tiered public health schools with a strong global reach are. California for some reason isn't so appealing anymore.

My ten year old cousin James wanted to talk to me today. My grandpa babysits him. He cries "I am soooo bored." Sentences that I know very well. He proceeds to ask me about how I deactivated my account on facebook. I said that I had Jeffrey my brother change the password so that I can no longer sign on. "Ohh so you can't go on to play, facebook is boring these days."

He sounds a bit washed. It was as if it was more than just boredom that had overcome him. It was something else, a sense of sadness in his voice. Sleepy suburbia southern California does that too you. Your imagination can get lost among concrete and stiff houses. Red lights. Green lights. Strategically plotted plants. Closed doors. Trash comes every Sunday, nothing else different. Weather monotonous.

"Why don't you go to the library? Ask grandpa to take you to the library"

"No I don't have a library card"

"You know you can get comic books at the library"

"Really? Eh its okay, never mind I don't have a library card"

I wonder what he thinks that I do. I look forward to spending more time with him. I think it will be a lot of fun to teach him a few things about life. People can only learn what they know. He's at a pivotal age where his naiveness is still held within him and I don't want him to lose that to computer games.

James, front and center, Rebecca (James favorite cousin) and Nick (the cousin that likes to ask all the other cousin who their favorite cousin is) - This was on my birthday in 2009. I'm not sure why I have the same face in all the photos?

---

The other day someone asks me "What I want to do, and why I wanted to study for my GRE's" Having not been asked that yet by anyone, I was actually a bit taken a back and blurted something out about battling human trafficking through a public health lens.

"You gotta do law then. Get a law degree"

Interesting. Then I went into a famboozled state of mind because I hadn't thought about that yet. I talked to him about wanting access and power in order to really make change. I mean I am making change, but it doesn't come as easy nor is it "highly respected"

I'm not sure what I am aiming at, all I know is that I need access and power in order to really have control over where resources are allocated. After freaking out a bit, dreams slightly crushed I began talking to my friend Sally. I realize that even with some sort of assumed "power" - which many lawyers have, it may not be used effectively, nor will it necessarily mean you'll use it for good. 

At the end of the day, as my boss would begin her sentences with, we really just eat, sleep, and function. Human beings want to feel good about themselves. I think everyone is born with a certain amount of "goodness" in them. It can easily be washed away, stored, or reduced with a series of life events. Now whether one allows that goodness to ever flourish or surface again is also dependent on a series of life events. 

I've gotten to where I want to be by following my own path and not listening to others. My grandpa still loves me. Might as well keep going at it.