just realizing

that sometimes you live out the best parts of a B movie. on thursday night, some of the folklore crew and i ventured forth in search of salsa dancing. we reached our club, but it was closed. so there we were -- standing outside in high heels and discussing what to do next when suddenly, without warning, a black car with tinted windows pulled up to our corner. the window rolled down and a man leaned out and asked, "are you guys looking for salsa dancing?"
why yes, how fortuitous. the only way to improve this script would have been to have him ride up on a horse, wiith a cape and swinging a sword. but i suppose a black car will do. it did have tinted windows.

with my sisters, it always starts with food and ends with grey's

it's good when people understand.

JoieTang: i eat all the time now
JoieTang: i ate a HUGE bran muffin the other day after i had already eaten a turkey burger with swiss cheese on it
medolie: so
medolie: big deal
medolie: i had some cheesecake and cookie with h- yesterday over grey's anatomy
medolie: where i continually hit him and said
medolie: "you can't just ask for her back after you broke her heart!"
JoieTang: i KNOW! that was so WRONG!
medolie: i was like, "don't believe him! he can't just have you back that easily! and you slept with him when he was still married! uncool!"
medolie: but i still love patrick dempsey
medolie: he makes my heart queasy
JoieTang: i can download episodes off of abc for free, i've discovered. and i watched the new one this morning at 1.
JoieTang: i love the other dude
JoieTang: i love him
JoieTang: i love chris o'donnell all grown up and hairy
JoieTang: i love his character
JoieTang: and meredith IS annoying me
medolie: i saw that
medolie: but my internet has been too slow to string it
medolie: so i had to go to h-'s where he has tivo
medolie: b/c i worked until 10 on grey's anatomy day- i was angry
medolie: she is annoying me too
JoieTang: so sorry
medolie: mainly b/c
medolie: she didn't DO anything to deserve the attention of two guys
medolie: one who is OH SO HOT
medolie: and the other who is too kind
JoieTang: like, HOW is she ALLOWED to have two...EXACTLY!!!
JoieTang: she's not that amazing, is she?
JoieTang: and her lines have no depth
JoieTang: she's so glib
medolie: no, not lately
JoieTang: and unfeeling
medolie: i didn't mind her before
medolie: she was just flawed yet charming
medolie: well not charming
medolie: but you could see that she WOULD have friends
medolie: but now she's just like
medolie: "who do i choose?"
medolie: and finn....
medolie: she hasn't doen anything for him to want her so badly w/o walking away in an angry puff
JoieTang: i know! i know!
medolie: derek, they actually were apparently in love
medolie: so i understand the turmoil there
JoieTang: i know!
JoieTang: like finn should be like
medolie: the "you're not good for me, but i want you" thing
JoieTang: screw you
medolie: yeah, exactly
JoieTang: you would take cheating loser-boy over ME
JoieTang: ME?
JoieTang: the beautiful sweet hot man who understands that you're all "dark and twisty" and all of that business, who makes you dinner and brings your roommate food. why do you not get that i'm wonderful? obviously you love the other dude or else you'd pick me in a heartbeat because i am obviously so much better for you!
medolie: exactly

anecdotal

so there i was, coming home from school, just after dark. i turned onto my street and there is this dude with his back towards the sidewalk, looking into the passenger seat of his car. i think nothing of this. but as i walk closer, i can hear the distinct sound of pee hitting concrete. he wasn't looking for something, he was using the door of his car as a stall. to give him privacy, i avert my eyes and keep walking, but as i pass him, he looks over his right shoulder, and calls out, "hey, sorry!" then he waved with his free hand. it was brilliant.

the truth will _______.

today i tell my classmate m- that being in a new place is overstimulating, so much so that i cannot quiet myself enough to focus on our reading, and, "this is infuriating because didn't i come to graduate school to absorb material?" and she says yes, this is so and that i should breathe, not unkindly, only matter-of-factly.
sometimes we lie to ourselves.
i was lying. only i'm not sure what the truth is, exactly. inexactly, there's something in my head about looking for love. the word is love, but i don't know what it means, to look for love, why there's this looking, or how it relates -- the reading and the love. but, i can't read, can't even breathe, and it is connected, somehow, to love.
i remember being on a boat in china and writing in my journal that all stories are about love, even when they're not. maybe i was right.

currently i spend more time writing to myself on this screen than i do reading, which is unfortunate, which is wasteful (of time and money), but it is what i do. to feel real.

i hope

my fortune cookie fortune of the day says, "good things are being said about you."

introspectively speaking

there's a line playing in my head from the movie, "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" in the manner of a song that just repeats and repeats. it's, "i'm not a concept. i'm just a girl looking for her own peace of mind." and then tangerine, the character, goes on to tell her male counterpart that she's not going to save him. and he replies, "ok," before proceeding to believe that she will.
i wake up these days with half-formed thoughts in my head and then approach this site as a place to talk, to myself, until meaning is wrested from the haze of the morning, or alternately, sometimes i invent a character to whom i target my language. either route, it's like writing a letter into the dark, which is actually another line, this time paraphrased, from Tennessee Williams in the foreword of the first play i ever read ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") in high school, bought from Copperfield Used Books in Spring, TX, next to the TCBY on Louetta for $1.50. he claimed that he wrote every play as a letter to a stranger whom he regarded as an intimate friend. and again, there was something about speaking into the dark.
it's the dark that catches me today; it's the idea of not being a concept; that catches me this morning. i'm sitting in my underwear, cross-legged on my twin bed with my laptop propped on my feet.
perhaps it is this. there have been many who talk to me through the night but never ask me to lunch the next day or introduce me to their friends or invite me to a show or teach me to throw a frisbee. and my guess is that, to them, i'm a concept, a gesture in the dark, something interesting and romantic existing in a safe vacuum into which they can dip and be saved and depart into their newly reconstituted lives while i stay here, because i only have this one reality.
i am the intimate stranger in the dark.

I gave in to the list thing.

Three jobs I have had in my life:
1. Subway Sandwich Artist
2. Riverboat Hostess and Tour Guide
4. High School English/ESL teacher

Three places you have lived:
1. Houston, TX
2. Provo, UT
3. Berkeley, CA

Three other places you have been:
1. China (Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Xian, HuangShan, Yangtze River, Wuhan, Chongqing, JiuZhaiGou, Lijiang, TaiShan, HuTiaoXia, Guilin, Kunming)
2. Taipei, Taiwan and Hong Kong
3. New York City, New York

Three places you would rather be right now:
1. in Houston
2. in Spain, with my sisters
3. Outside

happy friday

JoieTang: do you think you might stick with it?
Raging Aardvark: teaching?
JoieTang: yeah
Raging Aardvark: i've always had a love for teaching. i've always had strong feelings about education. i'll want to keep educating and maybe mentoring in some capacity or another. but I don't think i can, financially.
Raging Aardvark: the price of being alive is far too high.
JoieTang: i've expressed that before, only my catch phrase is "life is expensive."
Raging Aardvark: death is cheap as dirt.
JoieTang: no, dirt is pretty expensive these days
JoieTang: they sell coffins at costco

houston

i didn't know i loved houston this much.
i'm wearing a t-shirt that says, "cowgirls have it, cowboys want it," bought at a salvation army this past summer, the day i began to marginally intuit that i might someday need, well, a shirt like this. i've never owned a pair of boots or a cowboy hat. i've never even said the word "y'all."
but now suddenly "y'all" gives me pause. if i so much as hear it in passing, i actually stop walking and look for the speaker. this past week, in fact, my office was interviewing for internships and as this one applicant turned to go, he said the words. he said, "ok, bye y'all."
i almost jumped out of my chair, "did you say y'all?"
my boss started laughing, "you really like that, don't you?"
and while she's saying this, the kid is looking at me, sort of grinning, his bag hovering between his shoulder and the floor, and i don't know how to explain. so i say, "i'm homesick."
and i am.
everyone loves the bay area/wants to move to the bay area. i'm the only one who wants my concrete-bound mall/multi-plex/sauna-like hybrid of an ugly, grey city that spills off into a forever never never land of suburb-suburb-stripcenter repeat repeat ad nauseum.
the first day i moved here, an admin, ned, helped me register for payroll. he made small talk as i filled out the paperwork. "so you're from houston?"
"mm-hmm" i said.
"how is it?" he asked.
"in what way?" i asked back.
he looked a little suprised, not that i blame him, "well, in that 'how is it' way..."
"i love houston," i said without looking up from my forms, "it's ugly and it's hot and i love it."
"oh...why?"
i looked up, "i think it's because i like things that exist below the surface," and then went back to filling in blanks. ned and i get along famously, by the way, and i wasn't trying to be dramatic. i was surprised by what came out of my mouth, am still surprised, by how a place becomes home, and by how much i wish i was back.
but i can't go back, which brings me back to the beginning wherein i'm wearing a shirt that says "cowgirls have it, cowboys want it" and eating a huge bowl of fried rice while watching grey's anatomy. the sheer quantity of fried rice is making me sick, as is the derek character on grey's (the man should be shot).
izzie, another one of the characters, spent the entire episode lying on the bathroom floor and asking, "how did i get here?" and i admit to echoing that wonder. now granted, in the spirit of tv drama, she's on the floor because her fiance of one day unexpectedly died, and i'm merely lying on a single bed in berkeley with a tub of fried rice in my stomach, but nonetheless -- how did i get here? and if i too feel, despite my life's definitive lack of obvious drama, unable to move backwards or forwards and that everything is in slow motion, when does it get better/how do i make it better? it will get better.
the end.

summary

when i'm not eating falafel, my diet consists pretty much exclusively of chocolate-covered everything.

flying falafel fridays

it's not just alliteration. on friday there really is a campus booth with a sign that says "the flying falafel...volunteers eat free".
berkeley has more falafel per square foot of sidewalk than any other place i have ever encountered. i'm not complaining. i love the falafel. otherwise i wouldn't know that fred's deli has a footlong falafel sandwich for $3.99; that sunshine deli sells avocado falafel pita, super falafel pita, and a falafel plate with hummus and a choice of sides; or that the bear's lair on campus has a falafel lunchbox to go.
this falafel phenomenon (and that was for the love alliteration) amuses me, however, because in an age where the french fry is considered a demonic creation of the fast food industry, how a deep-fried ball of chickpeas can masquerade so effectively as a healthy, vegetarian option is...well.
whatever. chickpeas over potatoes and down with mcdonald's. because that's the berkeley way.

supposedly so open-minded

in berkeley, people are ok with naked. my new friend g- told me that one day, to prove that "chemistry grad students aren't pussies," he stripped off all his clothes and paraded himself down the street. the cops drove by, honked, and said, "put on your clothes, asshole," and then drove off. so apparently, this sort of behavior, if not exactly condoned, is at least expected. after all, it's berkeley.
however, if you say, "oh, i don't drink," all sorts of questions arise.
it's funny. all this anti-establishment pride, and no one notices that all they've done is normalize their counter-culture. we accept all kinds, espouses berkeley. subtext: so long as your kind is our kind.
the only lesson that i derive from this is that instead of saying, "i don't drink," i should just say, "oh, i've had enough." i already drive like i'm drunk anyway.

they look the same, but

i am so confused when a student-type walks up and asks questions about a project. this week, the anthro 160 undergrads have been wandering into the folklore archives in droves and saying things such as, "so, i was thinking about the project and was wondering..." at which point, my mind tends to shut off, because i'm shocked. there are students who think about their projects. they ask for help when they're confused. they decide to...wait. right, i'm at berkeley. they got into berkeley, so barring the possibility that someone else filled in their applications, these are the 18-year-olds who advocate for their own education.
my high school students were the ones who turned in their homework, maybe sometimes, if i bothered to literally chase them down the hallway, possibly while throwing things at them and yelling, "WHERE is your HOMEWORK? Do you UNDERSTAND what HAPPENS if you don't turn in THIS ASSIGNMENT?"
how does one create a culture of success? i'm still asking this question.

Part I

Since coming to Berkeley, a few things have happened.
1. I discovered a vegetarian co-op that holds naked pizza Fridays. 2. While walking, I saw a Michael Landon look-alike. He had the hair and everything. 3. I saw my neighbor, completely naked. Now her window is covered with a tie-dyed scarf. 4. I saw a fruit basket hanging from a random tree in People’s Park. A man walked by and checked it for fruit. 5. When I was walking down Shattuck, a person approached me with, “Good evening, would you like a free psychic consultation?” I politely declined. 6. I’ve seen a field full of goats next to the Schraffenberger Chocolate Factory. People stopped to stare. I took pictures. This was in the middle of a residential area, and the goats were eating weeds and aluminum cans next to crumbling, graffitti-covered walls. 7. While I was taking pictures of goats, a man walked up and picked me some wild fennel. It was tasty. 8. My first night here, I went to a beach bonfire and met a Stanford Economics PhD with a Nalgene bottle full of whiskey. He wanted to talk about Sumerian mythology. 9. Also on my first day, I was throwing a frisbee on-campus. I couldn’t backhand the frisbee and was asking, “How do you do this?” As if prompted, a stranger walked up, took the disc out of my hand, and threw it a perfect arc to my friend. “Like this," he said. 10. The day I moved in, another neighbor, whose name I do not know, offered me a plant. 11. I’ve seen the iconic “Happy-Happy-Happy Guy” of UC Berkeley. He's a bald Taiwanese man with a bright red nose who stands on a box at Sather Gate wearing a sign that says, “Please forgive me for being a prophet of God”. But all he says is, “Happy Happy Happy....” 12. At Sather Gate, student groups pass out fliers. Last week, there were two students protesting the student fliers. They walked up and down the commons area with cardboard signs, yelling, “If you don’t take ‘em, they won’t make ‘em!”