Electric Ladyland

The party down

Man did I have a rocking time in D.C.  I always have fun down there but this visit blew all the previous ones to smithereens.  Damn!  I honestly don't know how long it's been since I had so much fun. 

There was lots of good food:  Casa Oaxaca, Saint-Ex, Five Guys Burgers among others.  Lots of drinking and partying in Adams Morgan and elsewhere too including Nellie's Sports Bar (Mm-hm, I watched the Sox clinch the AL East from a gay sports bar!  Who knew?).  The company was best of all, though.  I had such a great time with my friend Mike, who is a host par excellence, and I also really dug his friends.  It's rare to click so well with people you've just met but we got along great.  Everybody showed me a terrific time and was very welcoming. 

A few people in particular encouraged me to let down my hair and share more of my unvarnished self, which I had already been thinking about for a variety of reasons, and I was glad to hear what they had to say.  Um, yeah.  There's New England reserve but my own personal brand of reserve goes a certain measure beyond that.  I don't have to be so reserved all the time.  I'm going to make a few steps in that direction now.  It won't be anything as extreme as unleashing the inner Bitch Goddess but I think I will talk more about myself, share more of my unedited thoughts, and let down the "everything's ok" exterior a bit too.  Lord knows things have not been ok lately and there's no harm in just saying so.

So you could say my visit to D.C. gave me food for thought in addition to some fun outings.  I gotta say, after falling in love with San Francisco last month and then having such a terrific vacation in D.C. I am realizing that New York, while awesome, is not the center of the universe.  My first roommate told me she'd lived in the Big Apple for about 5 years before she got tired of it.  I'm in my 6th year and I'm not tired of it -- I still thrive here and was jazzed when I arrived home last night the way I'm always jazzed when I roll back into this city -- but I could actually see living somewhere else for the first time since I moved here in 2001.  That's a surprise.  It's a good thing I'm feeling this way anyway because I might well have to ship out of here depending on where I go to grad school next year. 

New York is still the shizz but yep, D.C.'s got it going on too.  If there's somewhere else I could have a Bloody Mary while hung over and playing Frisbee on a Saturday morning with people in suits I'm not aware of it.  That being said, it certainly was weird to overhear someone at a sports bar talking about how the Republicans have abandoned their central tenet of fiscal responsibility.  For chrissakes people:  it's Friday, we're drinking beer and that is not news!  Mike had warned me about the annoying political chatter.  But even factoring that in I had a kickass time in D.C. and will definitely be going back soon.

Entrapment in the world, freedom in a life of simplicity

I'm on vacation in D.C. taking a break from the Big Apple insanity and indulging in some me time.   I'm visiting art museums and doing a lot of writing in cafés.  It's been lovely.  I wanted to share this quote I came across at the Freer while taking in their Tales of the Brush exhibition:

In my youth I was out of tune with the world of man
My nature inclined me to the hills and mounts
By mistake I fell into the web of the mundane
And thirty years of my life have been frittered away

The bird in the cage longs for its home in the tree
The fish in the pond pines for its former abode in the mere
So I cleared the wasteland on the south border of the village
Returning to the simple nature, I have come home to my farm in the field

- by Tao Yuanming

The author wrote this poem sometime in the fourth or fifth century AD.  Why does it seem so very relevant to me now?  Human beings have long been contemplating the tension between the world we've constructed and where one finds a home in life.  Somehow we are made to seek happiness and fumble around in that world until we find our joy in a much simpler place.

Turn on, tune in

I was tired just now but I'm not anymore.  I'd been battling work fatigue and a contact low (as opposed to a contact high) brought on by proximity to a coworker battling some kind of bug, then I was feeling it even more after a pint of Hoptical Illusion at The Ginger Man in honor of a dear colleague who's leaving for the Peace Corps, but I've suddenly got my mojo back.  I just rolled into my new favorite neighborhood coffee shop and got some iced jasmine tea, saw that the Sox just pulled ahead of Oakland 3-1 thanks to another great play from Ellsbury, and I've got about two hours before this place closes.  So let's hit it, I'm thinking.

Got some good music playing and that's revved me up for my next wave of work.  It seems to be a pecularity of my life that I'm constantly working double agendas (and not in the conniving sense), double workloads.  One for my official job, one for me and my future -- where I want to be.

So tonight I've got a written assignment from a career mentor who's helping me tweak my resume for my grad school application.  Going to do that now as I monitor the Sox game.  Then it's GRE homework -- the more I do now the less I have to do while hanging out with Mike in D.C.  So here goes. 

The above photo, in case you were wondering, was shot near Haight-Ashbury as I was purposely getting myself lost in the streets of San Francisco last month.  That was a fun day.  I saw that advice emblazoned on the sidewalk, responded "Word," and considered it a bit of serendipitious encouragement. 

Speaking of random encounters, as I was on my way to The Ginger Man tonight I was stopped on the street by a Spanish-from-Spain man who wanted to chat me up.  He told me I was beautiful and, moreover, that I looked "brave."  Hrm.  Never had someone holla at me in quite that way.  Thanks?

Mmkay, on to the second shift.  Go Sox... I'll go too...

Hiro is my hero

Today I got back on the crazy train.  A day full of meetings, meetings, meetings.  I'm kinda over meetings.  Think I could've done without quite so many.

Yeah, it was a blur.  I only got to start doing work-work at 4 o'clock.  And there was a very odd episode involving an Office Space premonition I had that bounced really funny.  I left the office shaking my head.

Came home and it was time for chores.  On the way to do my laundry I noticed leaves strewn on the ground for the first time this year.  Here it comes, fall.   Time for pumpkins, maple sugar candy, a trip home to Massachusetts and lots of fretting over the Red Sox.  I'm in.

Watched the season premiere of Heroes tonight.  You can tell Twitter is populated with my people because we were all twittering about it.  You can say what you want about social networking (and I have myself) but it's kinda cool to be linked up with fellow geeks and Sox fans in real time.  I've actually gotten some interesting tech resource references from people on there, stuff that's useful to know in my line of work.

Oh, back to Heroes:  so of course I couldn't bring that show up without mentioning Takezo Kensei, who is obviously a takeoff on legendary swordsman Musashi.  For starters, Musashi was also named Takezo when he was young.  I know this because I watch far too many Japanese historical dramas.  I was pretty tickled when Takezo Kensei was revealed to be an Englishman, someone of the Caucasian persuasion.  He's out there representing for all of us non-Japanese who've ever wanted to wield a katana (I actually got to do so once - it was pretty badass).   Still though, I have to say I have trouble following the Japanese dialogue spoken by the non-Japanese actors on Heroes.  The guy who plays Andoh is pretty good and George Takei's good too but our Takezo had some pretty noticeable glitches.  And the geeky side of me was hoping the 16th century Japanese people I saw would use the same old language they use on the dramas I watch.  Nope, mostly current.  But one can hope.

Also on the subject of TV, I have a confession to make:  I am getting addicted to Rock of Love.  I'm not big on TV in general and reality TV even less so but good god it's such a train wreck and there's metal and bad hair involved... I can't help myself.  15 very dodgy women vying for the affections of a man who wears eyeliner and boxy moo-cow coats.  Sure, I'll watch that!  I think it actually was good for resetting my brain after the weird day at work.

Now off to dreamland.  It's just the right temperature outside so we've got the windows open and wonderful breezes blowing through the apartment.  Think I'm gonna sleep well tonight.

A daze here, dumplings there

This weekend was pretty good to me.  Saturday I got up late and ambled over to the local cafe, sat down and stared out the window for a good three hours or maybe more.  I wasn't even keeping track of the time.  Wrote fifteen pages in my journal without even noticing as there was a downpour going on outside, big fat raindrops plunking all over the pavement on Steinway Street.  I was happy, in my element, just so elated to have a long afternoon stretching out before me.  Nowhere I needed to be, nothing I needed to do.

Last night I got together with my friend Dawn for some good buddy time and geek time in Astoria.  We had a great dinner at Mundo (mmm, baby okra!) and a lot of fun talking tech, politics, liberation, all the good things.  While we were at dinner my little (ok, not so little -- they're 20 -- but they'll always be little to me) cousins added me as a friend on FaceBook!  I was tickled.  I guess that fits -- they're right there in the FaceBook demographic.  To think I was hanging out with them at the family ranch in California just about a month ago.  Like Dad said tonight, it already seems like six months ago.

Today was GRE class and I hadn't done all the preview work before I got there.  Whoops!  Math kinda whaled on me a little bit, more of a preparedness thing, but I really enjoyed doing the problems and was actually really excited for someone who was running on four hours of sleep, a cup of coffee and a marginally tasty muffin.  I wished I'd had a teacher like my current GRE prep teacher in high school.  I would have been all over that math stuff.  On the sillier side, she's really hooked on Rock of Love (fellow glam metal fan and 80s child just like me) and so what am I doing but downloading that show, checking it out on her recommendation.

Went out for dim sum with Nina-chan today.  We hit up a Shanghainese place in Chinatown.  It probably wasn't dim sum proper that we were doing but we did get some xiaolongbao and gyoza.  It was dumplings-o-rama, oh so greasy and starchy and heavenly.  I went to work for a couple of hours after that and it's a minor miracle I was actually cogent enough to do any of the research and memo-writing that I did.  Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow, revisit those docs and see that I'm really making recommendations for the installation of a dim sum bar in the 10th floor common area.  Doh...  well, I am good friends with the Operations Manager.  Maybe we could make it happen.  ;-)

Now I'm going to take a bubble bath, read a book and drift off to sleep as befits a quiet Sunday night like this.  On to another work day tomorrow but tonight is all about the relaxing.  More later.

Meditation in the waking state

It's Friday and I'm off work.  Can I get a hell yeah? 

Let me start by listing the good things.  (a) I'm not working and that's awesome, (b) I've got my plane ticket to Japan in my hands and that's very awesome, (c) My "There's No Place Like 127.0.0.1" babydoll t-shirt from ThinkGeek arrived today (no I will not be buying the HTTPanties),  and (d) I had a really good calligraphy session last night - the kind I haven't had in a long time.  I was so absorbed in each stroke and each movement that it was like deep meditation.  Good for my bruised spirit.

Had a very good moment this week when someone was able to get me to slow down and just notice the world around me for a very tranquil 20 minutes or so.  My whole body relaxed from the inside out over time and I felt better in body and spirit.  The same calm, warm feeling washed over me last night as I was practicing calligraphy.  I felt pleasure in applying light pressure to the brush to bring out some nuances and curves in a stroke, joy in assembling a compact and well-formed character as well.  Now I'm about to take my journal to the local coffee shop and just write about whatever.  I know the same feeling will arise again.  Like I said the other day, as I write I remember and take stock of the big picture.  Then I realize that things are in fact not so bad and the sky is not falling.  What needs to be worked on (job, cough cough) becomes clearer and easier to solve, less fraught with emotion. 

Of course feelings of panic and desperation are likely to come back at oh, about 7:10.  Yes, that would be right on schedule.  That's when the Red Sox play again.  I hope they're not on what Dad heard called their "annual late-season march to nowhere."   

A little work and a little play

Well, I got my answer.  Even He-Man is vulnerable to the advent of fall.  I didn't know it was possible but I guess, just like the warm rays of summer, we'll have to survive without views of his well toned pecs until next year's spring thaw.  I guess he's a seasonal pastime.  Well He-Man, we hardly knew ya before your conspicuous and scantily clad he-body went into he-hiding.

Spent some time doing GRE homework tonight.  Not feeling so great physically.  I've got some sinus pressure that's giving me a slight headache or even just light pain in my head somewhere unspecific.  Feels uncomfortable.  Tonight I'm going to take it easy and hopefully the Red Sox will win.

I've decided to spend a couple of hours doing something productive as soon as I get home each night, then give myself a free pass to go and have some fun or just loll about.  Little bits of measured progress.  That way what I'm working on doesn't seem so daunting and monolithic. 

Last night I spent a good solid hour at the neighborhood coffee shop emailing professors and other good people to contact about my grad school application and trip to Japan.  Knocked out four of those messages.   One was to a Zen art dealer, the other to a fellow JET alum who was until recently a professor of Japanese Studies at Yale, the third to someone affiliated with the Japan Foundation and the fourth a scholar on the Obaku Zen sect.  All four people will have different and quite useful perspectives on what I'm proposing to undertake.  Oh, and I also got a call from someone who's agreed to help me rework my resume with a grad school focus.  She gave me a writing exercise to do in advance of our meeting next week.  Separately, a current PhD student and fellow JET alum who's in a program I'm applying to happened to contact me yesterday about that and a JET alumni matter so it'll be a good occasion to check back with him about how I'm shaping up for applying to his program. 

So yeah, I guess you could say yesterday was productive.  So funny.  I forget the things I've done almost as soon as I've done them.  They run out of my mind like water downstream traveling at a rapid rate.  But when I write I remember.

Tonight's agenda of productivity involved GRE homework.  Analogies and Antonyms.  Most were easy but the advanced analogies got tricky.  I took note of the problems that flummoxed me and am going to run them by my teacher when I see her next week.  The fun activity to reward me for my diligence and faithfulness to my mission?  Well, last night it was supposed to be the Red Sox game.  Fat lot of fun that was.  If they show signs of rolling over and playing dead tonight I think I'll go watch a movie instead.  Feh.

Oh yeah.  Just about to buy my plane tickets for Japan with my friend Lisa.  Hooray!  To think I'll be back there in just a few weeks.  I'll be strolling the streets of Tokyo and Kyoto faster than you can say ittekimasu.  And I will really, actually be back at the Obaku temple where all of this originated engaging in zazen and shakyou.  Never would have thought I'd be doing this back when I saw that one piece of calligraphy by Mokuan Shoto in 2001 that brought everything into such clear focus.  But here I go.

Deep thought:He-Man::?:?

Due to a combination of vacation days and Jewish holidays I had most of this past week off from work.  It was good.  I took the first day to just sleep and watch TV.  My body really needed a break and so I didn't make it out of bed much that day.  Wasn't feeling too great either.  The rest of the days I alternated between being productive (which I tried to resist), watching TV or movies, and planning both for grad school and my upcoming trip to Japan. 

Toward the end of the week I spent a lot of time having Deep Important Thoughts™.  Oh, they were so very Deep and Important.  And a little bit scary after I thought too much (probably shorted something out).  I had a brief spaz-out induced by said thoughts, the kind which I think everybody has when they're about to make a big life change, but fortunately I got on the phone to a friend who's also applying to grad school and talking to him helped immensely.  Now this was good -- usually I just freak out and don't call the friend.  Note to self:  calling friend = good.  Do more of that in the future.

Of course there's something else that's good for keeping the balance:  indulging in mindless distractions.  I'm really liking He-Man, which I discovered through Gothamist.  Apparently this guy is for real!  If you look back over previous posts you'll see a hilarious video of this dude doing push-ups on the pavement by Union Square.  I showed this to my buddy Marc last week and now we both really need to know what this guy's deal is.  Marc emailed the link to all his coworkers, who work around He-Man's stomping grounds, and they're on the lookout now too.  If you find He-Man you can even add your sighting to the Google Map they have up there!  And this site gets updated pretty regularly.  I wonder what's going to happen as it gets colder outside.  Will He-Man brave the elements and proudly continue to strut in all his shirtless, ripped glory?  Only time will tell.  Dad and I are also wondering what would happen if He-Man were confronted by Chuck Norris.  After all, when he does push-ups, Chuck Norris doesn't push himself up -- he pushes the Earth down.  He-Man is clearly encroaching on Chuck's greatness and that sort of provocation cannot go unchallenged.

Marc introduced me to Real Ultimate Power, which is freakin' hilarious.  Ninjas, man, they like flip out and kill people!  And it's awesome!  And if you achieve Real Ultimate Power somebody might hook you up with fries!  Check out the definition of seppuku and don't fail to read the hate mail, which is the best part.  Some of us Japan aficionados can be really sanctimonious and a select few chose to give this guy a piece of their minds with hilarious results.  Of course where ninjas are concerned I still have a soft sharp and deadly spot in my heart for Ask a Ninja.  He battles nonsequiturantulas but his recipes are even better.

So yep, I've had some giggles this week to go along with the Thoughts of Great Portent.  I also consumed a lot of media as I said.  Here's the accounting of my tele-gluttony:

• Hot Fuzz.  Awesome!  Hilarious!  Watch it now!  Yarp!
• Shoot Em Up.  Pretty funny in parts and Clive Owen is delicious.  My mom recommended this movie to me.  Jeez Mom, there are hookers doing things in this movie that I'd rather not know about my mom having seen!
• The White Countess.  Painfully boring and trite.  I only watched it to see Hiroyuki Sanada and even he couldn't save it.  Ralph Fiennes, I thought you had better judgment.  Kazuo Ishiguro, I loved your Remains of The Day but this story of yours had every cliche in the book and just nothing interesting at all.  I give it five Mehs.
• The Sea is Watching.  Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, who died before he could film it.  Very good film, eerily reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina.
• Sakuran.  Didn't read the manga but I loved Anna Tsuchiya in Shimotsuma Monogatari so I checked it out.  The movie itself was very manga-like with everything in technicolor hues and I kinda liked it.  Also found it interesting for its focus on the oiran, about whom I knew next to nothing.  I'd love to learn more about oiran speech -- it sounded very rarefied but not quite like anything else I'd come across before.  In the movie it was sometimes startling to see how rapidly Kiyoha's speech plummeted from such politeness to outright guttural vulgarity.  Too bad the subtitles couldn't have denoted it somehow.
• All of the Firefly episodes.  Started off slow, got better and then there were a couple of downright fantastic eps!  Now I see what all the fuss was about.  Really good show.
• The Serenity movie to follow up those Firefly episodes.  I might... just... say... that this is the best sci-fi movie I've ever seen.  Wait.  Did I just say that?  Ok, I'll let that marinate for a while.  But whether or not I retract it later or get hit by a bolt of lightning, the fact that I said it at all should be an indication of how awesome it was.

I also downloaded all 49 episodes of NHK's Taiga Drama from 2004, Shinsengumi.  That will be my next Japanese historical drama marathon.   It's an excuse for me to sit on my butt and watch a lot of TV but I also get to (A) learn archaic Japanese that nobody uses anymore and (B) pick up a lot of Japanese history and some cultural tidbits.  Oddly enough the historical parts have helped me on several occasions as I've been doing calligraphy research.  Now can your average American TV show do that for me?  No.  I rest my case.

So yeah.  That's what I've been up to for most of this week.  Apart from that I welcomed my new roommate yesterday and it turns out she's an Obie from my era.  I'd say I'm surprised but this type of thing has happened too many times for me to be surprised anymore.  We're everywhere!  She's neat and I have to say that although it was great to have the apartment to myself for a while, it's also really nice to have the company too.  So here's looking forward to a happy cohabitation.

Also enjoyed watching the Sox pummel the Yankees on Saturday night.  It was nice payback after their painful loss the night before.  And I've been having fun studying for the GRE too (geek!).  Don't tell anyone!

Some days are just wrong

So apparently I'm in an extended period of bad mojo.  I'm trying to roll with it.

Our server room's AC crapped out for the Nth time last night.  This morning we had to shut the servers down because it was a roasting 102 degrees in the cabinets.  The AC repair guys then realized that they'd brought the wrong motor.  Took them an hour and a half to get the right one and bring it over, then start the repairs.  My buddy from work quipped "I'm wondering how many more clowns are going to climb out of the car!"  We laughed that laugh you get when you've just hit the end of the line and it's so bad it's funny.

Everything's fine now, we're all hunky dory.  And all of a sudden we're junking the gimpy AC unit we never wanted in the first place to get the one we'd asked for in the beginning.  That's cool with me.  Great.

Only thing is, my brain shut down at around 3:30.  That was it and after that point no neurons were firing off anymore.  They went on strike.

Now I'm home.  Gonna rest.  Tomorrow's a fun day with my friend Lisa.  We're going to see rakugo in English.  If it's anything like the rakugo performance we saw last month it'll be hilarious.  I could use some good laughs.  Then Sunday's GRE prep class and a lazy brunch with my girl Nina.  I've got some time off coming next week too.  Mini-vacations planned to D.C. at the end of this month and home to MA for fall foliage during peak season in mid-October.  Hurrah.

Working for the weekend

People have been looking at me with that "Are you ok?" look this week.  I think I must look stressed.

But actually, I'm feeling more or less all right apart from a slight sniffle and itchy eye thing I caught from my friend Marc at brunch on Monday (thanks buddy) which has me reverting to glasses.  And that's prompted the "Are those glasses new?" comments.  Nope, not new.  I just don't wear them out much.  But you gotta rock the Prada every so often.

Working hard, working hard.  Arbeit, arbeit.  (アルバイトじゃないけど.)  Yadda yadda.  SSDD it feels like...

Was in the middle of said work today when my iPhone rang and I noticed it was my calligraphy teacher.  He invited me to an art show at the Nippon Club and so we went.  It was pretty interesting:  a modern take on Japanese themes, tastefully and imaginatively executed.  The artist herself was a very sweet and sincere woman, "控えめ" as Sensei put it.

After that it was off to Suibi for an Okinawan meal.  The Souki Soba set was sold out already so we went for the Okinawan Soba set.  And there was lots of awamori and good conversation.  Slowly I relaxed.  We talked about family, hometowns and life in general.  It was good.   Being an Okinawan native he noted some very non-Okinawan things present.  Apparently togarashi = not so Okinawan...  Funny because I had been thinking it might not be for some reason - and why on Earth would a girl from Massachusetts even have the slightest idea one way or another?  The food was still pretty good although not Earth-shattering.  We talked calligraphy too.  I showed him the photos of the Son Man Jin piece from San Francisco.  Good stuff.

Now home, I'm getting ready to turn in for the night.  Up early tomorrow to prep laptops for a database training session.  At least it's Friday.  Did I mention I was looking forward to the weekend?  'Cause I so am...