Yearly Archives: 2011

this same flower that smiles today

I find myself resigned to some­one’s care. It’s not an easy kind of con­trol to relin­quish, but late­ly I trust as lit­tle as pos­si­ble in the future and do my best to go along for the ride. As the old poem goes; be wise, strain the wine, or as Zorba would put it, “DON’T BE DELICATE”. I did­n’t plan on liv­ing for­ev­er any­way.

On a cold night, we keep the only promise made, one of those small won­ders that still make me believe. I fit some­where between needs and wants, tem­po­rary relief and long-term side effects, class and home­work, nib­bled lips and bit­ten tongues.

in a field

 

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a well-watered place

The fall is hold­ing out against the win­ter, trees clutch­ing bright leaves before the chill breaks their grips. It’s won­der­ful­ly warm among such colours, and we walk in the val­leys of Appalachia to take in the smell of moun­tain air as rus­tic hands around us work live­stock and soil. In old Aramaic, Damascus means “a well-watered place”, a fit­ting name as the rain soon grows too heavy to be explor­ing the tiny town, pop­u­la­tion 981.

looking over a bridge

 

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frame of mine

I’ve made peace with this body. It has­n’t been an easy peace to come by, as I seem to get con­stant reminders about the diminu­tive size of my stature. Most recent­ly, I met an old­er Chinese woman who admit­ted that she thought I looked sick and weak only after she dis­cov­ered I had col­i­tis. It was as if she thought col­i­tis caused some kind of mal­nu­tri­tion that stunt­ed my growth, and she did­n’t want to bring up the fact that I was this size because it would have been too embar­rass­ing unless it was caused by a med­ical con­di­tion.

Asian male self portrait

 

I’ve been deal­ing with all kinds of sim­i­lar com­ments since I was a kid, so when a girl­friend would say that she liked a par­tic­u­lar part or por­tion of my body, I always thought they were just blind­ed by love. Eventually I real­ized that if they could come to love this body, then I could too. It will nev­er look right in any­thing but slim-fit extra smalls from Mexx. It will nev­er be good enough for my par­ents. But it will always be who I am, and I’ve learned to accept that.

some day i'm gonna find it out

Over-stim­u­la­tion is a sling­shot moved by the force of com­pa­ny for the sake of self-dis­trac­tion.

cat in window

 

And yet I’ve nev­er felt so alone. The nights are filled with absence, which I try to mol­li­fy with indul­gence. It’s okay for now cause I know I’ll be okay some day, when it’ll be safe to be alone with my thoughts again.

Maui Wowie

When Dave and Jenny asked me to film their wed­ding in Maui, there was no way I could say refuse. Soon1 I found myself in the only place in the world where Koa grows, and every tree I passed made me won­der if it would even­tu­al­ly be made into a ukulele or gui­tar. I was only there for two days, but it was worth every moment in the delight­ful weath­er, spend­ing time with some of the nicest peo­ple I’ve ever met.

The entire wed­ding group gath­ered for din­ner at Mala restau­rant, over­look­ing the Pacific Ocean and the islands of Lanai and Kaho‘olawe. At this time of year, the Maui sun­set pass­es in the blink of an eye.

I learned that there are only twelve let­ters in the Hawaiian alpha­bet (which is why so many of the words look the same to me), and the lan­guage uses Spanish vow­els. Each vow­el is usu­al­ly pro­nounced by itself (Wailea is said “Why-lay-ah”). I was sur­prised to see most signs in both English and Japanese; it turns out there used to be a sig­nif­i­cant Japanese com­mu­ni­ty in Hawaii, although most of the Japanese tourists go to see Pearl Harbor instead.

All the locals are super nice, per­haps due to the fact that tourism is one of the only indus­tries left in Maui2; it seems like most peo­ple liv­ing there are in the ser­vice indus­try in some form or anoth­er3.

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  1. Soon” being a rel­a­tive term when com­pared to the lim­it­less of time, as it took me rough­ly a full day and three planes to get there, from Ottawa to Chicago to Honolulu to Kahalui. []
  2. The oth­er being agri­cul­ture that’s most­ly been over­shad­owed by com­pe­ti­tion from Philippines. []
  3. As opposed to those from Honolulu, who have jobs relat­ed to the mil­i­tary in some way. []