vinegar in the morning

I am sitting in my room, contemplating breakfast.
Breakfast is the one thing I truly miss about home. Every morning my mother used to force-feed her children some form of breakfast, and those meals, to this day, are the only morning meals that do not made me sick.
Try as I might, I cannot seem to recreate them – possibly, because most people would not consider our mother’s version of breakfast real breakfast food, or real food at all.
When I lived at home, she would slap a boiled egg in a plastic bag and shove it into my hand as I walked out the door, or she would make these shakes with soy protein, flax seed oil, and apple cider vinegar.
Yes, vinegar.
I would turn around most mornings to find my hand holding a plastic sipping cup full of frothy orange liquid. “Drink it now,” she would yell (literally, she yelled), “It’s going to go flat!”
Currently, she is in her “green drink” stage, which means she beats green peppers, celery, cucumbers, green apples, and ice into a pulpy mass and gulps it down. “It has digestive benefits,” is her claim, and when she convinces me to drink it from her blender, I admit—it’s not quite so bad as it sounds, or looks for that matter.
But, I cannot seem to make any of it for myself. It is not the same.

For all the pain and anxiety (and I do mean pain and anxiety) my mother has caused me, for reasons too multitudinous to list, I digest better in her house. I cannot live with her, but I can’t eat without her.
What is this?
Perhaps, this is all there is. Perhaps, this is love.

passionate dialogue

Jowithani: i seem to be in an argment with adam concerning the place of music criticism in society. how did this happen?
JoieTang: sometimes we are passionate about things of virtually no importance
JoieTang: like with me
Jowithani: clearly
JoieTang: i am passionate about commas
JoieTang: passionate
Jowithani: b/c this has NO
Jowithani: (joi cannot type)
Jowithani:(she is laughing so hard she is coughing)
JoieTang: (a questioning look)
Jowithani: commas?
JoieTang: why, yes
JoieTang: commas.

curry

sometimes, i dream of going to a culinary academy. but then i taste my own cooking.

smeegle

Reduced to speaking in monosyllables and sentence fragments. Following conversation ensued.
(in media res)
Jowithani: darling
Jowithani: you sound like that thing from lord of the rings
JoieTang:
JoieTang: will you still love me
JoieTang: when i forget my real name?
Jowithani: yes, darling
Jowithani: of course i will
JoieTang: bless you
JoieTang: to oz i go
(exeunt)

speechless

today, i feel like saying something profound.
um.
something profound.

just so you know

people think being chinese is exotic. they think of asians as beautiful, kinky creatures with small, lithe bodies, and they believe that the asian mind is filled with mystery.
i'm asian, people.
get real.

blanket statement

the worst part about being a teacher is not the teaching. it's the planning.

a clipping from a sister's blog

my youngest sister writes cogently about a recent family outing. i have only to add that 1) the trip took upwards of an hour and 2) when it was all said and done, my mother said, "well, now i have fulfilled one dream..." the sisters and i, we were confused.

samedi, janvier 01, 2005 ::
my momma thinks i'm going to be depressed from sitting around the house all day. (recent surgery on her feet) she's probably right, but she had a very strange approach to curing this problem.
mom: let's go to central market in the woodlands!
me: there's no central market in the woodlands
mom: yes there is. you said you passed it once.
me: it's a special HEB in the woodlands, but it's not a central market.
mom: let's go anyway!
we load into the car.
melodie (the other sister, driving) : how do we get there?
mom: alexa knows.
me: i do?
mom: yeah, you said you know how to get there.
me: oh, well it might be on woodlands parkway.
mom: okay, let's go there.
melodie drives down the long and winding path. which is very dark.
melodie: okay this is woodlands parkway...okay, we're passing woodlands parkway.
me: oh, um, turn right?
melodie: hey look, randalls! is this HEB?
me: no. you know, i don't actually know how to get there.
mom: we stop at this gas station and ask!
she runs out to ask.
mom: okay, i know how to get there! we turn left, and then right.
melodie: left, and then right.
she turns left.
mom: no, right!
melodie: what?
mom: i don't know.
we turn left. it was the wrong way.
mom: call cody! (her friend who lives in the woodlands)
me: hey cody, where's central market in the woodlands?
cody: central market? what's a central market?
me: um, how about an HEB? maybe a big one?
cody: yeah, there's one on lake woodlands, near the mall, close to the highway.
me: k thanks!
mom: gosling is that way!
me: no it's that way.
mom: oh, home is that way!
melodie: no i think it's the other way.
joy: where are we?
we find gosling.
me: lake woodlands! turn here!
we get to the HEB. it is in fact, not a central market. it's "woodlands market," with a "central market cafe to go." we park the car.
me: yaaaay...can we go now?
we buy six avocados, 4 limes, and smoked salmon. you can't get this at any other HEB.

and

and so it goes. that i am awake at half past midnight, having just viewed a movie (Sideways) that made me think. not really, more made me feel. something. which is nice, to be able to feel something. i wonder, on a sidenote, sometimes at the phrase, "i don't feel anything.
we all know that not to feel is an indication of absence, which, by definition, should render a person silent and blank. what makes us say something about nothing?
yet again, can't touch my depth.

there are vices much worse, i think, than dropping $8.50 on a movie. i go to some movies alone, you know. and there are those that think this is strange. but there are some movies (the above included), that i want to see alone. it's a private affair.
there is a character in Sideways, a man who loves wine, has a passion for it. he is a little fat, a little sad, a little bit alone, an english teacher whose book has failed to publish. his ex-wife remarries, and it stuns him. he is lost. he runs down a hill with a wine bottle in his fist.
i sometimes want to run through a bookstore with books at my fingertips. skim, the surfaces of the bindings in the literature section (starting with A and ending with Rusdie) and cry a good cry. to what end, i don't know. something about dousing pain in what brings you the most pleasure. it's one of those pictures in my head; i am alone, with no one to question the sideways wish attached to such an action. in my head, the books would know that running down the aisles pays a broken tribute to the writing i myself cannot accomplish. it would, somehow, say that loving a thing can be enough--that it is not necessary to create it or critique it or discuss it or even know of every thing listed in the holy realms of the critic's inner sanctum in order say that yes, we love and are changed by those things we love.
how i would communicate this by running around an empty bookstore, i do not know. i must be magic.

we wished (and wish) to exist, this character and i. we had hoped writing ourselves onto paper would validate our realities. not so, it seems.
there is a scene in which he stares off into the horizon as he confides to a friend, "I am insignficant. Too insignificant to even kill myself...You can't kill yourself before you publish! Look at Sylvia Plath, Hemingway..."
i am not going to kill myself, by the way.
nor do i want to, i only want to say: yes. i understood. and it left me wondering (more with this wondering!) how many more people discovered one day they were ordinary and got sad, because they did not know how to go about being, ordinary.

fortunately (being) ordinary fascinates me. if anyone out there has made any recent progress, any at all, please, let me know.