Post-It Note Possessions

One of my best friends is doing her MFT (Masters of Family Therapy) and she told me about an interesting exercise they did in class the other day. Her professor gave them all color coded post-it notes and they had to write their top 5 stuff on them. They had five post-it notes for their top five people, another their top five activities, possessions, etc. Then he asked them to start eliminating a few of those things (1 from people, 2 from possessions, etc.). Then he started coming around the room and randomly taking post-it notes from people's desks. From some people's desks, he took all but a few of their post-it notes, some he took none.

Needless to say, it was a rather intense experience. Not only were you asked to think of your top five people (ouch!), you had to quantify your life in a very specific way. Then you were helpless as those things are taken away as you watch other people unscathed by the wrathful power of God. Clearly, this exercise mirrors life and asks you to experience loss in a particular way, probably giving different people a sense of relief, jealousy, anger, detachment, etc. And all the while you realize that they are post-it notes, they're little pieces of colored paper which have little resemblance to the real thing.

This made think, however, about the meaning that we imbue on all kinds of things. This from the girl who still has most of her undergraduate papers and three years worth of Wine Spectator tucked away in the closet. For a while, I told myself that my graduate work might necessitate that I refer back to my undergraduate papers (because I must've been so amazing a researcher that there's gems in there for me to borrow?). Then I piled a bunch of sheets and towels on top of them and pretended that they were serving as a linen shelf. Better than having them sit in the very bottom of the closet, right?

It's now been a full ten years since I've graduated and I've never opened those boxes except to look at what they were when I moved the last time. It's true that I haven't really had a reason to get rid of them. They're perfectly fine where they are even though they take up quite a bit of space. But it's also true that I've attached a whole mess of personal identity onto those papers. They represent the self-searching me who discovered gender and race theory, of the girl who went from a pretty typical Asian American SoCal girl with hair down to the elbow to one who was politically active, who had tattoos, piercings and was into the performing arts. In those papers are the first semblance of the seeker that I would become. My belief that the world could become a better place, that there is personal agency and possibility for some sort of social utopia, that's all squished together in a couple of file boxes underneath those sheets and towels.

And now I'm thinking that it's time to throw them away. The thought of it makes me wince. Because detachment is hard, and giving up anything that has served you for so long is hard. And it means that I'm admitting that she's gone, the person that I was when I first begin to discover myself has moved into the past, only to live in the memories of my friends and family. Moving forward is difficult and letting go is excruciating. I suppose that hanging onto the past is even harder, since it no longer exists.

One of my yoga teachers told me last week that getting rid of stuff only hurts when you're doing it, once you do it, you're given a sense of enormous relief, of spaciousness, of weight being lifted off your shoulders. There may be grief, since all loss, no matter how minuscule, is matched with grief and sadness. But once that's finished, there will be room for the present. And we all need plenty of room for the present because there is so much waiting to fill our hearts and minds.

So I'm going to do it, I'm going to take those file boxes and recycle them. Maybe they'll be made into other things: paper towels to wipe up a mess, or a paper bag to carry someone's groceries, or another cardboard box to hold the identity of someone else.

My Surreal LIfe

"Can you ladies help me?" she cried.

She was wearing pajamas, and a felted overcoat, and slipper shoes. Her hair was a mess, she held a plastic bag of squishy stuff in one hand and a pillow in the other. She was crying hysterically. My first thought was that she was homeless. But then I realized that I was standing in a hospital parking lot desperately sucking on a cigarette with a caretaker who was on a break. Maybe she'd broken out of the psyche ward.

She needed a ride to her doctor's office, which was a few blocks away, because the Emergency Room where she'd been waiting for four hours had somehow messed up her in-take and she'd been in a horrible car accident several days before and her son and daughter-in-law had dropped her off and gone back to Big Bear and she had possible fractures to her cervical vertebrae and several hematomas on her legs. What?! Neither of us had access to a car and she didn't like any of our other suggestions. She started walking away and the caretaker and I looked at each other and started feeling terrible. We looked at her limping through the rain and both reluctantly tried to think of what to do. Then we saw her pick up her cell phone and next thing we knew, she told us that her doctor would meet her back at the Emergency waiting room. She just needed help getting there.

So the caretaker and I took her things, each held one arm, and helped her through the pouring rain and into the Emergency Room. I gave her my hand, which she took hungrily, and helped her into a chair. I looked her in the eye and told her that it was going to be okay. I held onto her hand as she told us a garbled story about a car accident on a curvy mountain road and thinking that she was going to die. I noticed a rather large triple diamond wedding ring. She showed us a gigantic swollen knarly mess of an upper thigh and I started to believe her story a little. It didn't matter at that point whether or not her story was true anyway, I believed that she was in pain and needed me to sit there and hold her hand. She kept calling us "angels" and saying that her doctor would be right there.

It really wasn't that long until her doctor wandered in,maybe twenty minutes, but each moment seemed so full, it felt like hours. The lady pointed her out and I ran over to get her. The doctor didn't seem so enthused or even very concerned about her. The caretaker and I called out "good luck" and "good bye" and walked back to our little sheltered space beneath the parking garage. We lit up another pair of cigarettes and each took long drags. We chatted as if we were friends. We finished our smokes down to the filters. Then we walked slowly back into the hospital and back to our lives.

Is the universe mysterious or are we just dumb?

So it's ridiculous to actually believe that bad things always happens in three's. Besides the fact that it's not possible to prove other than with some anecdotal evidence, in the absolute, it's difficult to really classify things as good or bad. Things just happen and they may seem bad at the time, but ultimately, it's simply what happened.

I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about the way that the world works and considering whether or not there's a plan for us. Not really in a "predetermination" sort of way (I really can't swallow that my life has already been written somewhere like a crappy Indy dark comedy) but simply that the universe is constantly coming together around me in a way that has pushed my life towards a certain path, and that it will continue to do so. I am going to go right out there and say that releasing the control that I've always hoarded for myself has been liberating. And rather than leading to inaction, it's led to me move with more clarity through my life. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that I have things figured out, quite the opposite; it's just that I don't need to figure it all out, it's all coming and my job is just to receive it. To be truly open to opportunity, love and life is a really hard thing. I'm just trying to get out of my own way.

Buddhist nun Pema Chodron writes in The Wisdom of No Escape: and the Path to Loving-Kindness, " Life's work is to wake up, to let things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will." Maybe it's the nature of people, but I've found that lessons almost always come with "bad" things. When things are good, when we're comfortable and nestled deep in our cubby holes, there is very little learned. It's only when we venture out into the unknown, the dark place, meet our shadow or stand at the edge of our abyss that we're forced to confront ourselves, and realize that we didn't know a thing at all.

One, two, three, always in a row. Maybe it's because we're looking for it, or because it's the natural rhythm of the universe, or because we've smoked too much crack, but it sure feels like when you've experienced two difficult situations, there's a third to come. Otherwise, you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop (damn it, I actually said that to someone the other day).

I think it's just because three is all I can take, because if there were more, I'd keel over with the weight of it. I'd have to crawl underneath the covers and actually never come out again. But for now, I feel pretty safe, I think the universe knows that I've confronted more dark spaces in the last little while than I have in a very very long time. I've teetered on the brink and not fallen in. Thank you, lesson learned.

Truth and Honesty

I watch a damn lot of crime drama. You name it, I probably watch it. And on many of them, somebody will say, "You know how to pass a lie detector test? You tell the truth." Ha ha.

But what if the truth is something elusive, something that you don't even really know for sure? How do you pass a lie detector test then? I've been asking this of myself a lot of late and well, it sucks. I'm not a lier, have never been a lier. As a kid, we had small punishments for mis-behavior but the only thing that we ever got spanked for was for lying. Honesty was a really big thing in my household. Congrats Mom and Dad, I think it took.

But I think that a lot of the time, people don't even know that they're being dishonest, particularly with themselves. Looking at ourselves honestly is really difficult, maybe because we all want to think that we're special, that we're goddamn snow flakes, but in the end, what we want isn't that different. We want love, security, comfort. We are all individuals but we're also just drops of water in the ocean, all floating around together trying to make sense of things. To understand that we're all human, limited and imperfect is hard to swallow. To know that we're not much better than the next guy really sucks. For the most part, we're all decent human beings, trying the best we can.

And what if the truth hurts us and the people we love? What do we do then? I want to believe that all of our happiness is connected, that by making ourselves happy, we'll make others happy and vice versa. But what if those two thing can't coexist? What do you do then? Do we sacrifice ourselves? Do we dare ask to be happy? They say that the truth sets you free, but it sure can feel like a prison; isolating, instilling fear and putting you on the edge of a cliff.

Beware what you ask for because the truth can be liberating, but it can also be a Pandora's box. All kinds of stuff you didn't know existed just comes flying out and you can't stuff it back in. There's no unscrambling scrambled eggs.

So I find myself pushed out of an airplane, with a parachute that may or may not work. I find myself flying through the air feeling the wind rushing past my face so fast I can't even think. The earth is so far away that I can hardly tell that I'm rushing towards it. I'm just hoping that I remember to pull the string when the time right. Because everyone who's ever jumped out of a plane knows that it's not the falling out of the sky that can hurt you, it's suddenly having to stop and finding your feet on the ground again.

Service with a Smile

Everyone's a critic. First it was Citysearch, and now it's Yelp. Everyone's got something to say and we all believe that our opinion matters. If you've spent any time reading Yelp reviews, you'll know that they are frequently contradictory. No matter how many stars a restaurant has, there will be someone who hated it, thought it was "over-rated," got a crappy server, crappy food, crappy parking, whatever. Yes, I have heard very convincing arguments about aggregate surveys and how there is probably some truth to the ratings if 500 people thought it was good and only 10 thought it was bad. But does that mean that those 10 people were just wrong about their experience? That they really actually had a good time but just "thought" they had a bad time?

In my years in the restaurant industry, I've come to realize that every dining experience is a meeting of multiple parties. You both bring with you a lot of history and baggage. There are infinite reasons why people eat out. They're on a hot date, a blind date, they're celebrating, they're too tired to cook, the want to be seen, they just want to be removed for their life for a couple of hours, or maybe they just really want some fried chicken. Restaurants, too, have a lot of different inspirations. Some restaurants are open for prestige, for glory, for passion, or for money. There are places that offer a lifeline for its immigrant owners, there is almost always a culture of feeding and nourishing. So given that both parties come into the experience with the most simple of contracts (I want to eat, you want to feed me), what goes right and what goes wrong?

There are always a lot of unspoken and unconscious expectations, on both sides. As a restauranteur, I can say that any good restaurant works really hard to set the stage for a good experience. There's a lot of care in getting the best ingredients, making an appealing menu (that's both challenging and reflective of the chef and appealing to the diner), choosing an appropriate wine list, training servers, educating ourselves on etiquette, thinking about appropriate presentation, etc. A lot of work is being done in preparation for people to come and eat, something that they've done thousands of times, and will probably do again soon- like in the next 12 hours.

This is not to say that it's not the restaurant's fault if you have a bad meal and we've done all this work. The work is only a part of the equation. There's also all the unpredictable things on our side: purveyors who send the wrong ingredients, someone calls in sick, someone has a hang over, someone's dog died, your server had a bad day, is having a fight with their boyfriend, was called in when they were supposed to be going to a concert, etc. We're all generally just trying to do our best (yes, there are just crappy servers and crappy food too). And even if we're operating under the best possible circumstances, things always go wrong. It's why some of us love the industry, nothing is predictable. You're just fighting to make it a good night.

Then there's what the diner brings with them. Their expectations are a huge part of it. They're there for a meal, but often they have a dozen reasons why they are where they are. Maybe the wife just had twins and is going insane. A romantic night out is going to keep from her shaking the baby. There are miserable couples, there are "in love" couples, there are incredibly awkward couples and I haven't even mentioned families (oh god, the holidays are approaching!). All these people have an idea of what they're expecting (or dreading) that's been brewing in them from way before they even thought of the meal or entered the restaurant.

This is how we meet.

It's not difficult to see how regardless of the preparation, of all the good intentions in the world, everyone is not always going to have a good time. I can honestly say that I want everyone who comes into the restaurant to leave happy. But sometimes people don't really want to have a good time, their misery is too much to take and they want to spread it around and they pay you to take it. And yes, sometimes one of us is having a bad day and don't want to oblige you. It's not perfect, but that's the way it is. It's the nonverbal contract. It happens every time you step foot into a restaurant.

For me, I will continue to try my best to make the people who come into the restaurant happy. I will live with the fact that sometimes they think I'm a "cold Asian hostess with a shrill voice." (Thanks, Yelp!) I will try my very best to meet them where they are, despite my inability to control the circumstances that put us both there. I do this because I believe in nourishing people, in knowing my regular's quirks and favorite tables, in feeding people and giving them an experience that has the potential to make their day better than it was before they stepped in the door. I believe in meeting people where they are and hoping that they will do the same.

The Traveler

Do We Ever Outgrow Highschool?

Feeling like you don't fit in, worrying about what people think about you, trying to find your niche...these are all feelings that are normally thought of as highschool-age dilemmas. Vivian Paley, a kindergarten teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory School and prodigious author on children and learning did a study showing that by the age of four, kids already separate themselves into a hierarchy of those who fit in, the ones who are included in games, who have the parties that people want to go to, etc. and those who don't fit in, the ones who can't play hand-ball with the other kids, lie to their parents about not wanting to go to parties, etc. Four.

I'd like to think that we grow out of this juvenile behavior. After all, I've definitely seen "nerd" become Gods in college when they find the right place to be. They go from awkward kids who study a lot to suddenly being the cream of the crop. Girls flock to their superior intellect, think their nerdiness is cute, see a secure future ahead, whatever. But is this just an illusion? Do we ever really grow out of the feeling that we're not quite cool enough, that other people are not-so-silently judging us and deciding that we aren't going to be invited to the party with the jumping castle or a real arcade version of Street Fighter? (Yes, I actually had one at my 16th birthday party.)

And doesn't this just continue on at work? No matter what kind of job you have, from the hippiest non-profit to the most corporate of law firms, it seems to me that hierarchies still exist- it's just the criteria that changes. And I wonder sometimes if even that much changes. There's still the undefinable "coolness" attribute. No matter where you go, there are always the "cool kids."

So what's a girl to do? I've never really wanted to be cool, I am even less interested in that now. But when people consciously or unconsciously develop a sense of exclusivity, it's natural to respond. It's how hierarchy works, they step on top of you in order to let you know that there is a bottom. Do I change my behavior, the way I dress, throw a couple of dinner parties? I don't think so.

So far, the only thing that makes sense to me is to enjoy the view from wherever I am. It's actually liberating to just understand that I am who I'm supposed to be. I'm going to treat people with respect and equanimity. I'm going to be a dork and a nerd.

I think it's the next "in" thing anyway. Just look at the kids on Glee.

What''s Life without Eating?

My cousin and her boyfriend were recently over for a dinner. She's getting a Ph.D. in Chinese medicine and always entertains us with stories about her program. She told us about a woman in the Bay Area who has such strong chi that she supposedly doesn't eat. She only sucks on one seed a day and drinks one cup of tea. In Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda, there's also a story about a woman who learned how to live without eating. Okay, so it sounds totally crazy. And I'm pretty open-minded to crazy.

What did ensue, however, was a lively discussion about what the world would be like if food wasn't necessary. What if we were all able to live from absorbing the energy that surrounds us. What changes would ensue? In the short term? In the long term?

I've been thinking about this and since my world is based on food and eating, and personally, I think that the world would fall apart. So much of our culture (and by "our" I mean most of the world's known cultures) is based on food and eating, the world as we know it would disappear and instead of visions of enlightened beings, I envision dried up, vapid, annoying people without any lust for life.

Not only do we spend an immense amount of time growing and producing food, a good part of our daily lives are spent buying, preparing and storing food. Billions of people are employed in food production. And culturally, food is a way of giving, of loving and often the center of family rituals. Politically, nations rise and fall from their ability to feed their own people, of their ability to sell their goods. What would be the same?

There is an argument to say for free time. Think of how much free time we'd have to do other things if we didn't have to eat. How much less time would we spend on worrying about eating too much, eating things that will eventually kill us, or even eating too little?

Would China be even more aggressive if it wouldn't have to worry about feeling more than a billion people? Would countries that are immobilized by famine actually be able to spend time building infrastructure that would enable them to become m ore active members of geopolitics?

I suppose I'd have a lot more time on my hands since I would be unemployed.

In the end though, all I can think about is how terrible the world would be without pizza, dim sum, fresh baked cookies, or coffee ice cream. I like sharing amazing meals with friends. I like cooking for the people I love. I love to eat the food that the amazingly talented chef boyfriend cooks for me. Personally, if I were choosing a super power, the last one I'd go with would be absorbing energy from the freaking universe so that I wouldn't have to eat.

Breakfast of Champions

Strawberries from the Farmer's Market and Vanilla Ice Cream.

Yes, I Am Scared of Redheads

Approximately 2% of the world population has red hair. It's a result of 2 copies of a recessive gene on chromosome 16 resulting in a change in the MC1R protein.

I, apparently, am not the only one who is scared of redheads. There is some evidence that red hair and green eyes were thought to be the sign of a witch, werewolf or vampire in the Middle Ages. In the UK, "gingerphobia" or "gingerism" has been compared to racism and a family there was forced to move twice after continually being harassed for being red headed. There's even anti-red head crime as a 20-year-old red head was stabbed in the back for being a redhead. There's an articlefrom BBC News if you're interested (the English are serious about their red head-hating). While I do have an irrational fear of redheads and have since childhood, I did not know that I was being a bigotted bitch and contributing to such a nefarious cult of redhead haters. There is even an anonymous redhead hater group you can join online. I mean, it's become somewhat of a joke among my friends and while we speculate that I must've been beaten up by a red-headed bully as a kid, I really didn't know where it came from. I have my quirks and I figured that my discomfort around redheads was just one of them.

This is not a baby- it's the devil.

But I suddenly remembered something.  As a child growing up in Hong Kong, instead of the boogie man, you were sometimes threatened with the "redheaded, green-eyed" monster. Like, "you better eat your dinner (do your homework, practice your piano, etc.) little Jenny, or the redhead, green-eyed monster is coming to take you away." I'm serious.

My first instinct is to say that it must have come from an anti-colonial sentiment based on the presence of European colonizers in China and Hong Kong. Europeans were frequently referred to as "ghosts" and the history of European colonization in Hong Kong and China is certainly long and blood-stained. But... people in Hong Kong kind of loved their colonizers by the time I was around. In terms of popular image, the late 70's and early 80's was a great time for Europeans in Hong Kong. Hong Kong natives took real pride in their cosmopolitanism, their ability to blend European fashion with Chinese aesthetics. They loved French food and soccer. At every turn there was denigration of mainland China and their misguided communist beliefs. Was this hatred a throwback from earlier times? Was it actually racism of the Irish transferred to the Chinese from their British colonizers?

Nonetheless, I am very uncomfortable around certain redheads. Generally, they're one's who are very fair-skinned, have the bright red hair, freckles and yes, green eyes (I am a terrible person).  Luckily, my fear of red heads doesn't actually disrupt my daily life nor do I go out of my way to harass them when we come into contact. I don't cross the street so as not to be close to them (frequently, anyway) and I'm sure that if I got to know a redhead, I would happily claim them as my token redheaded friend.

What I came to understand, however, is that I never realized that just like every other racist, sexist asshole I've heard in interviews who say "It's just not right, having a Black man be the President," or "It's just nature, women take care of babies," I didn't take the time to investigate this fear I had. I didn't think about it or consider that my redhead hating could affect other people, or that my decisions could be based on something as artificial as the color of someone's hair.

I guess what I learned is that fear, instilled at an early age sometimes goes beyond reason. And it's our job, as free-thinking adults, to overcome these fears through rational thinking and tolerance. Discomfort isn't always a bad thing, it's actually a sign of growth. I realized that sometimes, you overcome your fear and realize that witches are people too.