Contemplating some non-essentials

Before I take off to NYC for the month of May, I've been asking myself a few questions, such as: should I bring a coat? take books or Kindle? tennis shoes or clogs? I know there's a lot more important things in the world to think about, but I can't seem to stop contemplating the non-essentials.

Here's a few more non-essentials I've been asking this past week:

Why did this snake die smiling?

Why was this lizard so angry?
(Was it because I almost stepped on him?)

Why did the hummingbird build her nest on a cord inside our garage, and then later, abandoned it? Did the babies fly the coop without our notice?

Why did the old Navajo woman get mad at Tom for throwing Mekko into the air?

(This shot, part of the hundreds of old photos I've been going through in the past weeks, was  taken at Earl's in New Mexico 23 years ago; Earl's is still there, and still serving one of the best Indian tacos west of the Mississippi. I'll get to see my 23-yr-old son in NYC when I'm there!)

Gratitude v. Attitude

Gratitude v. attitude wasn't the title I wanted to write, but that's what came out. It should have read: gratitude vs. appreciation, but maybe attitude is the better word. 

I bring this up because on the weekend, my friends and I were talking about what it meant to say "thank you" to someone, as in: thank you for everything I've never thanked you for before. I used the word gratitude to describe this phenomenon; someone else said it was more like appreciation. I accepted this. But then I started thinking about it later, how I've always thought of gratitude as the bigger of the two, i.e., gratitude encompasses a wider audience for that which is being appreciated. Maybe this is just mincing words. Maybe it makes absolutely no difference if one appreciates someone or thing, or is grateful for that object of appreciation; in the end, what counts is that one is conscious enough to realize that in a relationship, this is the component that's been missing. 

On Friday, the day of supposedly rain and cold, I took a jaunty hike up to the Observatory with my friend Louise, whose birthday it was. As an added fillip, her friend Susan B. had flown down from Portland to surprise her, and it fell to me to keep a secret all the way to the top. I accomplished my task without bursting. The day was wonderfully crisp and clear.

(Above) Louise ascending. 




(R) Susan and Louise descending

And on Sunday, friends gathered to ride in the second CicLAvia, a seven-mile bike ride through the streets of L.A., organized by a small group of activists (shout out to Aaron Paley) with the support of Mayor Villaraigosa. What a success! Two more, in July and October, have been planned for this year. 

The route started in the neighborhood near LACC, at Heliotrope Dr. and Melrose Ave., home to the Bicycle Kitchen; it continued along Melrose to Seventh St., past MacArthur Park and into downtown, ending in Boyle Heights—or at least ending for us at Hollenbeck Park, where we kicked back and took in the peaceful surroundings. It's important to note that the area of Heliotrope and Melrose was once dubbed Hel Mel, for its cool shops and hipster vibe, but is now known as —trumpets everyone!—The Bicycle District. For L.A., this is a huge, and I mean huge, attitude change, and attitude can be everything.

CicLAvia, 4-10-11

 

Hollenbeck Park, Boyle Heights

Joyism

I'm driving home from work and hearing a long stream of bad news on the radio: Yemen rebels fired on by the military, Egyptian rebels protesting the interim government, anti-government rebels retreating behind Gaddafi's advancing army; and more—we might be arming the wrong rebels in Libya, actually, arming al-Qaeda, all 15 of them, and I wonder, does it look as silly as it sounds?

Ernie as al-Qaeda

Meanwhile plutonium is drenching the ground around the Fukushima Nuclear Plant and scientist speculate how far it's spreading; however, no one at TEPCO is talking (especially since boss, Masataka Shimizu, is in hospital, as of yesterday), but don't eat the spinach or drink the milk and by the way, farmers, please do not farm! And workers are still trudging through the sludge (who are these saintly men who've put their lives at risk?). And back in the US of A, a majority disapprove of the way the prez is handling everything. And I've had a bad day at work, no, scratch that, a bad week, and the radio of despair is washing over me all the way to Ave. 52, where I pull off the freeway, and there, in front of me, is a car with a license plate that reads: "Joyism." Joyism. I'm stupified. It's so simple. Feel joy. Be joyful. An ism I suddenly find myself behind.

It's good to know that amongst the terrible and the tragic, there's still joy in the normal: kids home from college for spring break. Maya came home with her friend Maggie last weekend and the house was once again filled with laughter, tears and dirty dishes.

A few days ago, right before the rain, the L.A. sky was dark and dramatic.

I rushed home to get my camera, and try and convince Maya and Maggie to come along. They'd been holed up inside all day, on their computers, finishing papers that were due before the break, so it wasn't like they immediately jumped up to follow. But once outside, they seemed transformed: two girls out in nature....where, by the looks of it, they belonged.

Maya and Maggie

A few days later, in Santa Monica:

Maggie and Maya continuing the adventure...

Dear Students of Takasago...

Following are some letters my students wrote to the students of Takasago, whose school is sheltering 1000 homeless victims of Japan's earthquake in the Rikuzen-Takasago neighborhood, north of Tokyo. With resources tight and need great, Stu Levy, the founder of Tokyopop thought it'd be a great idea if people could send letters to encourage these students, who are working hard to rebuild; (his request was sent via Louise on fb—thanks Louise). 

I teach an advanced ESL class to Iranian, Korean and Russian students, who I realized would be perfect candidates to write these letters, as most have experienced disasters in their own countries. I just had to ask: my students immediately set about writing, gripping their pencils tight, diligently referring to their dictionaries for meaning and spelling. I told them spelling wasn't important; what was important was that they wrote from the heart. For an entire twenty minutes, no one talked. 

Here's a sampling of their letters (produced exactly as written):

Dear students of Takasago. we are in Los Angeles. we are thinking about your Live all the time and we are sorry for your lost. we know what you're going through. I am very angree and I wish I was there to help you. In my country we also experienced an earthquake.
we hope you can start your good life again. we are thinking about you and your life I wish Japan gets better faster. the Japanese pepale are picking themselves up and your story showed it in Nacazacy and hyroshima, you are special peaple in the world. 
God help you.
Sincerely:
kindly S.

Dear Students of Takasago
I am sorry that earthquake from Japan all of the world countries feels very sorrow
In my country we also experienced an earthquake
So Please don't despair of suffering
I hope you overcome quickly
my family, my country, all of people are thinking about Japanse people
Quen Shiteimasu!
Sincerely, K

Dear students of Takasago
Helo to the geat pepol Japan
wer heard about your terrible earthquak
and we were very sorry about it
we know what happend. that is very blues
you were and are a great nation and prograssive in the world
we have a bad experiance about earthquak terrible,
and you have a bitter remember about atomic bomb
in the end of 2 world war, I heard, after fifty years
all the fishes in the sea had blood cancer
So we're very worried about you
I believ you can make yourself same the past with honor
we're thinking about you in LA
with the best kindly, N

Two letter writers

The Ninth Ward

You know how it is when something of importance happens and you take it in as much as you can, but in a minor way, as what has happened has happened to someone else, somewhere else. Yes, you empathize, but you can go on with your life. Then years later, well for me years later, you recall this thing and the importance of it is so overwhelming, set off by something, say, like a piece of music you've listened to a hundred times before, but one day, you hear it for the first time. 

What got me started on this was I was looking through boxes of old pictures last week and I came across this one:

New Orleans, 1982

This was taken during the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, when I was down there with my brother and his friends, whom I had met on various Southern excursions— which might have been the reason I was getting my crawfish on. 

In 2006, the first year after Hurricane Katrina, Tom and I went down to N.O. to the same festival; on that occasion, we hired a guide to take us around to see the areas affected. As soon as we crossed the bridge into the Ninth Ward, we were hit with destruction as we'd never seen it—a war, a terrible war had flattened everything, and both Tom and I burst into tears. We walked around and took pictures, but mostly, we just felt numb. A year after Katrina, not one house had been rebuilt, not one tree had grown; everything was just as it had been after the flood.

My son is down there now celebrating Mardi Gras, or I should say, still celebrating Mardi Gras, which took place last Tuesday (March 8th). When I heard this piece of music by Charlie Miller from "Our New Orleans: Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast," while driving around L.A. last week, I was struck on a level deeper than my usual "observer;" then Japan happened. I was suddenly back in New Orleans: the waters rushing in and the world stopping and all that had been, gone and forgotten. 

So here's a little bit of remembrance of that time in the Ninth Ward, using a modified version of Miller's tune, "A Prayer for New Orleans."

Two Sets of Three, part two

Part II: Found in politics

Sonny

Sonny Kim is one of my students, a struggling Korean immigrant, who has more dignity than most (that's most people, not immigrants). She's tiny but has big balls. She barged into my classroom one day, demanding I give her a way to speak English. She'd had it with grammar and doing exercises. She wanted to speak: this was her last chance, she said, and I had to give it to her. So I did, and I became a better teacher for it.

She's the only one in my class who understood the analogy I used to define the word "contradiction." I told the class a contradiction is when Hillary Clinton praises pro-democracy activists who use social media on one hand, while condemning WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, on the other. Sonny got it immediately. 

Hillary Clinton, Sec. of State

Last Tuesday, Clinton announced an investment of $25 million in the "Internet Freedom Agenda," which she launched last year. As she explained it, it's a "venture capital approach" to funding tools for activists trying to get around censorship, citing China's firewall and the online blackout in Egypt. Wired Magazine reported she spoke in glowing terms of the revolution (after first coming out swinging for Mubarak); but when questioned about WikiLeaks, she denied any contradiction, saying there was no "hypocrisy in championing internet openness while opposing the radical transparency organization." Ms. Secretary, Say Whaaaat?

Samantha Power, on staff at the National Security Council and a special advisor to President Obama, (and I might mention a past adversary of Clinton's) is helping reform Mid-east policy. Power was the first to make the call that the U.S. needed to be on the side of Egyptian youth during the 18-day revolution, not Mubarak. Power's book, "A Problem From Hell," America and the Age of Genocide explores the waffling, passivity and impotence of U.S. presidents towards intervention, particularly, President Clinton's waffling, passivity and impotence during the Balkan War. She's now working for a man who might be accused of the same; but is this a problem for Power, or can she live with the contradiction?

My student Sonny can understand living with contradictions. She talks about freedom on one hand, while condemning America for her poverty on the other. Sonny finds it unacceptable that her elder daughter has taken a job as a bartender, although having the freedom for her to do so was one of the reasons Sonny came to America in the first place. For some immigrants, freedom is a vicious contradiction. 

So what do these three women have in common? They all have big balls, and they're all on first-name basis with "contradiction," an impenetrable firewall to get around. My admiration for all three.

An impenetrable firewall

(Arcade Fire)

Two Sets of Three

Part I: Found in Nature

 Gun

 Ku Klux Klan

Porcupine

Part II: next post