27: live in the details

My Mom always complains that I take pictures of nothing. She doesn't mean to be hurtful. It's a true inquiry. I grew up with the notion that film was expensive and photographs were a luxury, that we should get the most out of every single photograph we can take of the 36 roll film on our red instamatic. Where I'm from it's not a picture unless there's a person staring at you, mugshot style. When i was 10 years old, my Mother took me to a city famous for it's majestic volcano and there I was in my souvenir shot. Against the volcano, I was but a speck.

Always, I find that when I'm trying to take photographs, I struggle to compose photos that show the whole in totality. I see big picture in the small details, i think. hence, resolve to live in the details. It is evening here. The dusk is settling. There is still time. I can still make dinner. My kitchen towels are well-worn and I like that.



--ashima

7. resolve

2010
not just a new year
but the banner year for a new decade

do you feel a need
to mark the moment?

i do.

but i need to think about it
because i don't usually think
that one only ought to change
as indicated by an arbitrary date
in a calendar

because i know lots of calendars
gregorian
julian

all kinds of ways we mark time
but only one way to spend it

i need time
to think
to plan
so i don't make
haphazard goals---
like someone just wanting to make
enormous changes at the last minute

i want to really understand---
what do I need?
who and what matter?

i am open to ideas.

here is one:

resolve ....
to have nothing in my life and home
that I do not know to be useful
and believe to be beautiful

ashima

01.07.2010

elsewhere

Early Sunday morning, I take my place in the usual left seat by the cafe table in my kitchen and I make myself a cup of coffee and go somewhere, elsewhere.

Make a wish...

If these were my birthday cake, that's how many candles there would be for me to wish on. That ought to be a good thing to have thirty some odd wishes to give voice to but truth be told, I am leery of wishes for as soon as you think it, it already by token is perceived impossible and therefore requires intervention of the divine, supernatural, mystic kind in order to be fulfilled. Invariably an inordinate proportion of the wish list ends up with Matt Damon in an embrace. Then too, there's that guilt, that gnawing feeling at the pit of your stomach that you have disappointed yourself for not being the better person, for not wishing world peace instead of wasting a wish on Matt Damon.

So maybe instead of wishes, I shall blow candles in thanksgiving for I am very lucky to be here and that --- despite the odd packaging, the ocassional mishaps, the expected mistakes --- I am doing okay and I feel fine.

I've been thinking much about this feeling, particulary this needing to always measure our sense of happiness at any given moment. Juraj a few months ago introduced me to the work of Jonathan Harris, a technology maverick, an artist and designer. If you have the time and the inclination, you must watch this talk he presented at the TED conference. He is a genius in my book, a category I reserve for those who have the uncanny ability to give me new eyes. A technologist with a soul of an artist, Harris gives us a whole new way of looking at the world by applying technology that scours thousand of blogs and public forums for a very simple content: how do we feel?

If you are ever interested about how the world as represented by bloggers are feeling at any given moment, try cutting and pasting the link below in an internet browser and see what happens. If you are feeling adventurous, replace the word "fine" at the end of the link to whatever you wish. Try used, sad, creative, adventurous, crap, vindictive, shy. Whatever you feel like. It's up to you. That's what makes it beautiful. In fact, search for that word. Beautiful.

The LINK BELOW shows the last 50 lines that show feeling fine:

http://api.wefeelfine.org:8080/ShowFeelings?display=xml&returnfields=feeling,sentence&limit=50&feeling=fine

Simula

Happy New Year!

I am looking forward to this year with great enthusiasm but there's a lot of work ahead. I have to get going, get started, get ready. Here's a new beginning to a new year. I start with a metal letter sign A, a thrift store find. I clear my bedside table and ready it for beautiful and inspiring objects that will hold me in silence.

Goodbye, my banner year!

This was my banner year. I took a chance and chance took me by surprise. What is most amazing to me is that I am exactly where I was when I left---the same house, the same job, the same friends, always the same family though happily now more extended (hi amy!)---but everything is different because I see it with new eyes and isn't that all there is sometimes.

To the Sea, To the Sea

We are back in the islands. We come home to a flooded house and a ruined garden and it breaks my heart but we are buoyed by celebrations of a wedding. This is what I gave Amy to welcome her into our family. I hope she likes it. I made a cast of a conch shell I took from a sea, maybe from Palawan or maybe from Liguria. Last night we had dinner, the two families together. I see my brother move his way around their kitchen. He knows where everything is: the spatula to stew the curried crabs, the knives to open the oyster shells, the mortar and pestle to grind pepper to season the bangus. He navigates the space with the same ease as he does our own kitchen. I will take that with me when I leave.

June is Outdoor Month

and my favorite blog apartment therapy used my photo to tout that very fact.

Lovely morning light

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Karkarol. A town fiesta in Silang, Cavite, Philippines. Filipinos love parades. They celebrate sad and happy events with one.

For the time being I am...

Reading a book in the early morning light at the balcony of our home. Coffee with Amy and Ton. A quick lunch at Cafe Bola with Tita Chulia who is lovely and graceful in her years.

Met Wena and sat in on a copywriting class at the College of Fine Arts in UP Diliman. The professor was brilliant, quick thinking and mesmerizing. He can listen with intent as a student presents a two-minute product schpiel, distill that presentation to a germ of an idea, compose a thought and plan a strategy to convey that thought all while checking the fall of his bangs on his forehead. I was gushing by the end of the class. I inspect the students as they make their way to their seats. Aside from Wena, the outlier, the average age is probably 17. Imagine yourself at this age, the pimply, wormy version of you that belabored the coolness factor of a pink shirt and a mullet. I remember. A young woman passes by that could have very well been me 15 years ago---blue jeans, white shirt, short hair. I smile at the thought that I was once this small, this young, this petite, this unsure, this arrogant. This. They don't look old enough! At least, not old enough to know about subversive strategies for writing headlines for an ad campaign and yet they do. I'm impressed actually. Hear their ideas: a pocket videoke called Hymnos, a text illuminator called Lucente, and magic water called H21. Oh my pride! UP is brilliant still. Despite the dilapidated buildings, the holes in walls, the peeling paint, the scrappy yards, UP is still brilliant. What relief! What hope! Finally one for the side of the folded paper marked PROS.

Prayer Flags

These are the Tibetan Prayer Flags of Albion Beach. It's always a treat when I walk over and find them here. They belong to a nice man named Bruce. For the longest time, I thought the Chicago Park District put these up, but one early morning last summer, just after the beach zambonis came to level and ready the sand for its many guests, I saw him hard at work digging up the holes to support these flag poles. Everytime I see these I feel a call to prayer and as the flags dance with the breeze I feel the wind carry my good intentions, my hope to people my heart, out to the open sky.

Summer went by in a blur

It really did. Summer whizzed by taking with it the 20 or so degrees that makes swimming in Lake Michigan come as close as I can get to the tropics that I long for. Oh but I am so grateful for these summers when Chicagoans of all shapes and sizes come out hibernation and park themselves at the many public parks and beaches that hug the lake. I could -- and have -- spent hours just watching people in their vario---the joggers, the bikers, the roller blades, the swimmers, couples dating, friends soireeing. Sand on my feet, volleyball at hand, I played in a sports league for the first time in my life. I can't tell you how many Wednesdays were saved from Pathetic Pity Me Parties because my mind was consumed by getting a white ball across a net. I often find myself saying a mental note of thanks to David Burnham who made all this posssible.

I biked to work this morning in an effort to make the most of what sun and good weather we have. I can't believe how much cooler it's been. In a weekend the weather turned and just like that it's September. I can smell the fall winds coming just around the bend.

So long summer sun! Until next year.

Our creative selves

Let me preface this by recognizing that one really ought not tell anyone their dreams because 1) they don't make sense, 2) even if it does, it only makes sense to the dreamer, and 3) they're generally boring. I know that but just like many who feel they are on the brink of some kind of discovery when they recall a dream, I feel compelled to share it anyway. At least, I won't begin with I had a funny dream last night.

I wake up to NPR on weekdays. I think it's a great way to know what's happening around the world. Like many NPR fans, I check myself at parties or group discussions, keeping a mental note to limit segues into conversations with"I heard on NPR..." to a reasonable amount. The NPR alarm idea is really great except that now that I think my brain no longer jolts in awareness at the sound of talk, thereby rendering the use of radio as alarm uselss. My dreams blend into bits and pieces of the Morning Edition and the cool and matter of fact voices of Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep weave in and out. It makes for interesting news sometimes. I'm never sure why I know a particular bit of news. I think I heard it on NPR but I'm not sure. I could have just dreamed it. Anyway today, as I was waking up to the traffic segment, I dreamed of a ruled paper pad, much like the one I used in kindergarten, and in it were kid drawings (mine, in the dream) of Ted Novak on a pod-like space-agey air craft cruising past clouds while he's looking on to the perfect grid that make up Chicago. I could see the spindly spikes of Sears Tower and the curlies that suggest the lakeshore beaces and up on the north side at the border that meets Evanston, there was me waving to Ted asking where Abby was. Then I heard Renee, say sweetly, Thanks Ted and I was awake. I love these dreams where I see my adult life from the point of view of a younger version of myself. I think they reconnect me to a time when I feel I was at my most creative self.

When I was eight or so I wanted to know what it feels like to be a fish with all that salt water in their eyes. So I went to the kitchen and rummaged for some salt. Pried my eyes open and began dropping rock salt in them. Okay, so not exactly my proudest moment yes, but what I do remember was the thought process, a question that started with an attempt to sympathize. With a fish! At another time, at a pool party, thinking of floaters in my arms, I toyed with the idea of walking in water. I won't go into the details. I'll let your own imaginative child selves dream that one up.

Initial Creation

The impossible joy of a suspended leap... I read this phrase from Reading Lolita in Tehran, a book that has revived my love of literature.

This image which is by this amazing illustrator fits it so well.

While it's been awhile since I've read it, I do remember this sense of urgency that this books inspired in me. It was a strange feeling. I was exactly the same person. I woke up at my usual time, had my cup of coffee (to go from Dunkin Donuts), boarded my El train downtown and started reading. Reading about these women whose love of books was so great, they held meetings in secret, I felt I was in the cusp of change. They invent a word "Upsilamba" and attempt to define them in their own terms. One claims it is a dance, another says it is the image of small silver fish leaping in and out of a moonlit lake while another says it is the impossible joy of a suspended leap. I love this last one hence this blog.

So here's to leaping....