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.
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Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances.














-Robert Hass

My grandparents when they were young. My grandmother passed away several years ago and my grandfather is 95 years old now.

In Transition

I was listening to my ipod, slightly sleepy, comfortably seated in the back seat of a black cadillac on my way to JFK on Monday. The driver was a quiet and well-mannered young man who minded his own business. It has been raining in New York for almost a week but the day I was leaving, the sky had cleared and everything was clean and bright.

I sat in the back seat of the car thinking,
"I wish this car ride would never end."

I didn't want to be back in LA. I didn't want to be anywhere.
I just wanted to be in transition. Just like this- alone, listening to music, the scenery changing and irrelevant.

Unless, perhaps you are like myself, then we can meet at midnight at a cramped bar in Soho, huddled together at the bar, drinking bacardi and coke and cranberry juice and talk about music and art and writing, and how the Manhattan skyline reminds you of home even if the sense of home is lost in the actual streets.

Up in the Air

Let's see. My best friend just moved from New York to Singapore with her fiance. They won't be back for at least three years or never, since Peter wants to start a business in Shanghai. Their wedding is going to be in Singapore possibly during the semester. There's a high chance I won't be able to attend. My sister, who was staying with me for a couple weeks, went back to Seoul for a month, before she takes off to Madrid for a workshop, and then back to Boston. My crew from college is currently living/working/married in London, Madrid, Dubai, Seoul, Hong Kong and have no desire to visit or live in the U.S.

I'm helping a good friend ship all his stuff to Korea tomorrow because he's leaving back to Seoul on Saturday. My Seoul friends are attending the Dubai friend's wedding in Bali in June, but since that is way too far from where I am currently situated (without the money to travel around the world) I can't attend that wedding, either.

As for family, my cousins in New York whom I bonded with during my stay in NYC are moving to Hong Kong next year.

Everything and everyone being up in the air all the time - a reason for my anxiety.

A Windy Day Poem

What You Need for Painting

By Raymond Carver, Based on a Letter by Renoir


THE PALETTE:

FLAKE WHITE
CHROME YELLOW
NAPLES YELLOW
YELLOW OCHER
RAW UMBER
VENETIAN RED
FRENCH VERMILLION
MADDER LAKE
ROSE MADDER
COBALT BLUE
ULTRAMARINE BLUE
EMERALD GREEN
IVORY BLACK
RAW SIENNA
VIRIDIAN GREEN
WHITE LEAD

AND DON'T FORGET:
Palette knife
Scraping knife
Essence of turpentine

BRUSHES:
Pointed marten hair brushes
Flat hog hair brushes

Indifference to everything except your canvas
The ability to work like a locomotive.
An iron will.

From Beijing

This is a part of a letter a friend wrote me from China:

Sometimes, I think life is hardest when you're trying to change it, to make it better. Acceptance of something is easier, though not necessarily the most recommended route. You and I are constantly changing our lives and as creatures of habit, change is hard. There are too many unknowns. Hang in there. Sooner or later, you find the parts of you that you wouldn't give up for a greener side.

=)
Helen


*Helen and I met in Seoul. She is originally from New Jersey.

Autobiographical Character Sketch

This was submitted to a certain film school that rejected me:

Tidbits of faces, places, conversations and moments that unceasingly fill my head.

On traveling verses shopping-
You should come, too. Instead of buying two,three Michael Kors bags.
Michael Kors is only three hundered dollars.
Only three hundred dollars?!
Yeah...CJ and I talked about it and we have psychological issues.
So two people with psychological issues got together and came to that conclusion?
It’s either that, or we’re superficial people with vanity issues.
So you’d rather be mental than be superficial?
Yeah.
Jamie?
Yeah?
We’re more similar than I ever thought.

On best friends who drunk-dial you daily from Tokyo-
Laughing is like crying, I don’t cry, I laugh. You, Addie, are a diver. I don’t like diving. I like breath strokes. I try diving but I see myself doing breath strokes again.

Matt on one of the greatest singers of our time-
Andrea Bernanni or something, HE’S BLIND! Before I was like, why does the dude look like he is always sleepy??

On Sun’s chipmunk cheeks that are about to burst-
Her eyes are brimming with tears but a stupendous smile engulfs her entire face. Have you ever felt so lucky you feel like you’re going to burst?

Hae-kyeong on laptops from IBM, the IBM T40 versus the IBM T30. It’s like this. You have a BMW. I have a Sonata. Jee on “smoke” rising from New York City streets. Yeah, New York is so dirty. No wonder they staged Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coming out of the sewers here in the eighties. Harvard Law school student and dear friend Kerry on the topic of “despair, failure and loss of faith.” My biggest tragedy is that I’ve never experienced a tragedy. Jason on the topic of his squinting Asian eyes. If my eyes were any bigger I’d feel exposed. Boyoung on the topic of our own people. I think people should be free and not oppressed. If you’re oppressed you turn out like…Koreans. Cece brutally honest again. When you look at them they’re so ugly but they’re so happy. It’s cute. It makes you think about a lot. Like, why am I so unhappy? Timmy’s support on my choice of life. Don’t worry, Addie. Ten years down the road if you turn out to be a poor writer living on cereal every day, you’ll have rich and powerful friends like me to back you up.

But Gustave Lebon, French Sociologist, nailed the dilemma: To respect tradition is a condition of existence for people; to know how to disengage from it, a condition of progress.

And in the library five-year old curly-haired Tizian Frohn is hugging his Magic School Bus books to his chest and exclaiming these are my books forever and ever and ever!

I don’t want to be anybody else, I just want to be the best version of myself. Are you still swinging at the biggest piñata in the world?