Wednesday, August 31, 2005

non-fashion

t-shirts seen on young, seriously cool (attitude-wise) passerby:

DEATH

POT IS A REALITY KICK

I LIKE SLEEPING OUTSIDE

TAKE TIME BY THE FORELOCK

FAT CAMP STANCE

in fact, the attitude is slowly suffocating me, but i'm getting used to the lack of oxygen. a fashion quirk i do not do not DO NOT GET – and maybe i just don't read enough vogue – is the black ankle socks with heels. with a skirt! some younger women even wear black knee-high stockings with their little no-back kitten heels with the skirts. you can see swaths of bare leg between the pinchy black band of the knee-high and the hem of the miniskirt! it is hideous, and in a city so image-obsessed and excruciatingly attentive to the details of fashion, i cannot understand the many WHYs of this equation.

but i do get some gusts of fresh air once in a while, enough to keep my brain functioning. and oddly, they tend to come from the anachronistic. in one day last week as i criss-crossed the city (inefficiently maxing out a US$9 metro pass just in that one day), several people on the train restored my perspective on style. first there was a tallish teenager who stepped into the train holding a traditional bow upright, all six feet of it, and dressed in a white wrap shirt and wide-legged indigo archery trousers that are essentially a floor-length skirt. the getup looks surprisingly masculine, especially when the guy isn't wearing a punky sneer but a modest zen-like expression.

two rikishi (sumo wrestlers in training) clopped into my train in wooden sandals, tall and imposing, with their hair in oiled topknots and dressed in blue-and-white yukata (summer cotton kimono). everyone continued their busy emailing on their phones or chatting with their friends or whatever, but we all watched as the rikishi walk in, talking in low voices and making their way to the other end of the car.

towards the end of the day and its rush-hour train station craziness, enter the requisite dignified middle-aged woman dressed in an expensive kimono in layers of lilac and gray silk shot through with silver. her obi probably weighed as much as a large baby. her dress was also complemented by her complete lack of haughtiness and instead, attitude of gentle confidence and grace. i bet she makes a mean cup of green tea.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

today's small happinesses

instead of wilting immediately in the 91-degree, 90% humidity that has characterized this past week, i went out into this cloudy morning and virtually floated down the stairwell of the subway station around the corner, it was so (relatively) cool. i didn't break into an instant sweat. this made me not feel like punching people in the face, a pleasant start to the day.

inside the station, a 3-year-old pigtailed girl holding her mother's hand wore a little flower-print shift over cuffed jeans and pink rubber rainboots. she was sort of twisting and sing-songing in a sweet way until her mother told her to be quiet. (that last part made me so sad that the force of it pushed me against the tiled wall, where i had to lean until the train came.) on the train, her mother took the boots off and smiled at her gently when she fidgeted her feet off the edge of the seat.

i was taken around to check out the rooms at a fancy hotel where some pissant assistant manager refused me access last year. i wrote a complaint via the hotel's website and never heard from them. this year i showed up not sweating like a pig, and bearing a purse (!) rather than my usual raggedy patagonia hiking bag, but i have a feeling it was more about the nice man than any minor changes to my appearance.

lunch. oh my gosh, lunch – bento served in a lacquer box, the bottom tier of which contained rice and a bit of flaked salty fish, the top tier of which contained carefully arranged comfort food. there was a kind of smushed tofu with paper-thin slices of vegetables mixed in, then fried and sliced, served cold. alongside the tofu was a bit of sweet miso eggplant, a slice of lotus root, a ball of japanese taro, a cube of konnyaku (a bland, gelatinous item made from some kind of yam), a sweet-salty bit of tuna, a spoonful of daikon salad, some cold steamed green beans, a pile of black sweetened seaweed with tiny bits of fried tofu in it, and other lovely morsels just the right size for chopsticks. oh, and miso soup stuffed with green onion and silken tofu! and the lady of the house was so warm and aunt-like, patiently explaining how to make the smushed tofu thing. lunch truly made my day.

no, actually this made my day: as i was walking up a street, a little girl on a bike approached, ding ding dinging her bicycle bell like crazy and barreling in a zigzag amid the foot traffic. i saw her grandfather, riding his own bike behind her, start laughing aloud with joy watching her clearing the way. we shared a smile as our eyes met when he passed.

and then at the end of the day i finally found some cute, functional shoes – for cheap! – so i won't have to slosh around wearing sandals when it starts raining. it's the little things.

Friday, August 19, 2005

on tokyo time

'travel is for people who don't know how to be happy,' nandani said, but we ignored her. – nell freudenberger

i travel a lot. i hate having my life disrupted by routine. – caskie stinnett

someone once told me – maybe more than one, maybe more than once – that i'm never happy where i am. no one's said it to me lately, and even at the time i didn't think it was an accurate statement, but there's some truth to it. nowadays i like to think i could be happy almost anywhere.

it's still more exciting, though, to be preparing for a trip, or in transit, in immersion, imbalanced, in love with a new place. the trick is to learn how to experience all that in the present, wherever you happen to be. this is a challenge for me to learn and appreciate, but i'm learning slowly.

i was thinking about mindfulness in the moment while riding the train from narita into tokyo. outside the window i saw a jumbo jet in suspension over a village and adjacent bright-green rice paddy. then midafternoon light bouncing off of the shiny blue roof tiles of suburban homes crammed closely together. then a hairdresser's shop with a sign bearing the name 'BIG BOOTY SALON' with a graphic of an afro pick. welcome to tokyo.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

what happened thursday night

dos equis and i were meeting a friend for an international pop overthrow show in SF, but we stopped for a bite beforehand at a little crêpe place on polk. while we were in the café, our friend called me to plan our rendezvous, so i went outside to take the call. a white-haired and -moustached man was stumbling up the street with some difficulty, sort of lurching from parking meter to newspaper stand to bike rack, where he'd hang on until he was ready to launch himself towards the next one. nothing unusual for polk street, where some of the more oddball transgendered folk of SF strut their stuff and random heads push baby strollers full of recycling and mutter and roam and yell incoherently a lot.

so after this brief phone call i hung up and had my hand on the door of the crêpe place when the white-haired guy yelped. i turned around in time to see him trip forward and take a faceplant into the sidewalk. i don't think his hands reacted in time to break his fall, and the shock of the scene froze me in the doorway for a moment before i shook it off and went to help him. 'are you OK?' i asked in a stupid panic, having just witnessed how OK he wasn't.

a well-dressed guy whose schmancy car had been pulling around the corner leapt out to help and we eventually got him propped up against a lightpost. the man had a big welt on his forehead with an imprint of the metal sidewalk-hole cover he'd landed on – a neat grid of dots and dents. he was alternately woozily grateful and apologetic or vehemently irritated with us. we said we wanted to call an ambulance and he refused to let us do so, demanding that we instead walk him home around the corner. he leaned heavily on us, one on either side of him, and he complained that his knee wasn't working. as we walked, we gently tried to persuade him to call a doctor or at least have a friend come over. 'no, i'll be FINE. i just live RIGHT THERE,' he said. on our six-legged shuffle up the street, i asked, 'has this happened to you before?' and he snapped, 'why do you want to know? are you writing a book?' well, shut me up.

after we'd paused to inspect two apartment buildings and he finally recognized his place, he began fumbling for his keys. a young couple was just leaving the building and held the door open for us. dos equis asked them if they knew our guy, and though they seemed mildly surprised to see him with an entourage of three people, they said this sort of thing had happened before. then they said, 'well, gotta run!' and left. by now the bruise on his forehead had turned into an uneven purplish bump roughly the shape and size of a mint milano oozing blood.

the sharp dresser said he was in a hurry and had to leave, and he and i awkwardly thanked each other. our man said i was a beautiful person and apologized for being so much trouble. i said it was no problem, but i was really worried about his head and would he please let me call an ambulance. 'do you know how EXPENSIVE that is?' he demanded. you can't really argue with that, but then he added, 'honey, i'm a MAKEUP artist,' as if oh, that explained everything, he could just dab some foundation on there and fix it right up. again, what do you say to that, except maybe 'concussion' (silently in your own head)?

so we finally got him into the doorway of his apartment, which had a framed blueprint and art on the walls and looked clean and quite nice, and he began tearing up and telling us he had all these other issues, like his [CENSORED] friends who were in london right now, could you believe that? those [CENSORED] [CENSORED]. dos equis and i stood there with cartoon bubbles above our heads reading '.........'

once again i pleaded with the guy to call a doctor or at least have a friend come over, and once again he got mad and refused. we shook hands and belatedly introduced ourselves. then we said goodbye and he shut the door. i felt terrible.

dos equis and i walked towards the club, wondering what to do. on the one hand, we didn't want to burden the guy financially or create problems for him when he'd hinted at 'other issues.' on the other hand, what about that part where he bashed his head against the pavement? he couldn't move one of his legs very well, and he seemed to have trouble focusing, and that morphing lump on his head was somewhat alarming.

when we got to the club, dos equis consulted the door guy, a friend of his, for advice. the door guy excellently suggested we call the police department's non-emergency line and they'd send someone over to check up on our man. so i called 411 to get the non-emergency line and instead got connected to 911 (now why would i call directory assistance to get the number for 911? yeesh).

i explained the story to the very professional, calm and concerned 911 dispatcher, and she said she'd send an officer over to do a well-being check. she got my phone number in case they had questions for me later, which is good because i'd given her the wrong apartment number. unfortunately i didn't hear the phone during the show and didn't call back until 10:45pm when it could be reasonably expected that the guy had already passed out for the night.

and now we're just left hanging. what happens to these unresolved stories? if i choose my own ending, does that have any effect on the actual outcome?

Thursday, August 11, 2005

fiesta and unrelated mutterings

one week (madre de diós!) before i hit tokyo again for a seven-week stint. since it's been awhile, i wanted to spend a few days con mi mamá y papá y mis compadres en santa barbara antes de salir a japón. and now i am practicing the wrong language! this is because i chose fiesta weekend to make a visit home. fiesta (officially known as 'old spanish days') celebrates SB's spanish-colonial, mexican and indigenous chumash heritage. the five days of fiesta feature parades with horses and children and confetti eggs smashed on people's heads, concerts and mariachi competition, dance performances ranging from flamenco to mexican folkloric to aztec, and even rodeos. there is much drinking and merrymaking and eating of churros and tortas and tri-tip tacos. fiesta is one of SB's more respectable gatherings of public drunkenness.*

so there was some taking in of the fiesta flavor. my painter friend gwen and i went to UCSB to see her cousin's exhibition at the art museum there, which consisted of her amazingly intricate quiltwork that is both erudite and beautiful. on monday, filmschoolgirl pulled a ferris bueller on her job interview and came up for a beach day with my goddog. we talked fiction, gossiped, and cackled before she drove back down to LA. a small pod of dolphins made a short appearance near the shore. mom sliced up fresh albacore sashimi for dinner that made my eyes roll back in my head, it was so tender and delicious. gwen and her beau and i had pizza and watched a terrible john waters movie, and i helped move some irrigation hoses on the ranch to continue in my tradition of 'it can't be a vacation unless there are chores involved.'

my last morning there, before dawn, i woke suddenly to the rattle-bang of my bedroom window. it only lasted a second or two so i figured it was an earthquake, and later that day i asked other people if they'd felt it but they hadn't. so i thought maybe it had been an annoyed ghost, like gwen half-jokingly suggested due to a conversation we'd had the day before. but i carried around this unlikely suspicion that maybe someone had tried to break into my parents' house before suddenly running away, or that maybe i was being haunted for making fun of my ancestors. then my mom called the next day to let me know it was actually the space shuttle coming back into the atmosphere. ah, right.



* see also: halloween in isla vista (although it's like, so much deeper** than just partying) and UCSB graduation-season couch-burnings.

** among the copy edit lapses in the article – eg, "right of passage" or "loop whole" – is this choice statement: "...she is sympathetic to arguments that Halloween is a dangerous place, particularly for women who are forced by the Isla Vista Halloween culture to dress more proactively than men or risk not fitting in." [italics mine]***

*** is it mean to mock collegiate journalists?

Monday, August 01, 2005

love

yesterday i attended the wedding to end all weddings, the loveliest i've ever witnessed. the bride being one of my dearest and most cherished friends made the celebration special to begin with, but everything unfolded peacefully, beautifully, and in a way that made everyone there feel that they had been invited and inducted into a new family. it was such a joy and a privilege to share the day with them.

it was simple, sort of informal with a few traditional touches, and one of the most spiritual, sweet, insightful ceremonies i've ever heard. they had it in a shady botanical garden here in portland on a sunny afternoon, with only 70 or 80 family members and friends gathered closely around them. both bride and groom looked wholly in love and fully present with each other, in addition to looking like a couple of statuesque models in their swish timeless outfits. they are the coolest.

i now have a bit of a crush on portland. there've been the hip neighborhoods, the colorful houses and flower gardens, the endlessly unique young and tattooed folk who are making art and music all over the place, the excellent handmade stuff i've accidentally bought when i didn't realize i was shopping, the coffee, the brunches, the pabst (drank it and liked it), the old and new friends, the locally-owned record stores and bookshops and little cafés. i spent the week doing everything from cutting rebar and drilling holes in concrete to getting my hair lopped off again and bleached all weird to roaming around a monthly nighttime arts and music fest where a picnic table full of people honking a jalopy horn drove down the street. the summer weather has been fantastic and the people here are indie-cute and consistently nice. psst, portland – wanna hold hands? *blush*