do the unco pill, the unco pill!

That's Unco Pill on the paddleboard.

My dad celebrated his birthday on August 26. It was the second Monday of the school year, and everyone was laden with things to do. Somehow, we managed to scoop out an hour from our normally concrete routine and have dinner as a family at Mimi's Café. My dad procured a handy-dandy coupon, and off we went! I brought a laptop to finish some English homework, set it up next to the bread basket (in quite a show of digital-age manners), and typed to the rhythm of munching family members. It was an atypical school night that I hope my dad will remember. 

Now, for some notes on Dad:
- Mr. Bill spends many hours wandering the digital world. He's navigated into the farthest corners of the Internet, pocketing countless online treasures to share with his friends and family. Not a day goes by without his emailing me some fascinating snippet. Here's a typical subject line: "3D Printed Building. Bay Area Innovation FTW!" (I have learned not to cringe at FTW, because my dad says it aloud rather often. Another one of his favorites is 'sketch.'). I respond in the lamest of ways - a meager smiley is all I can manage - but I do read them all. If you see this, Dad, I thank you for enriching my life in this way!

- It's an Asian-church (or simply Asian) custom to address every member of your parents' generation as Uncle or Auntie. My dad, the lone white guy at each church we've attended, is Uncle Bill to his countless nephews and nieces. This summer, we gave him a (ferociously loud) Beats Pill speaker. He totes it everywhere, hence the nickname Uncle Pill. Uncle Pill bestows the gift of loud music to all dishwashers, laundry-folders, and shower-ers that cross his path. My dad has the most eclectic music taste: Hawaiian yodeling, Fergie, harpischord concertos, ska, and Irish folk music are his go-to Pandora stations. 

- My papa has been a fine scholar all his life. Feed him a question of physics or philosophy, and he will surely address and digress! The remarkable breadth of his knowledge gives him a peaceful perspective on all earthly matters. I confess that I tend to side with my mom when they disagree, but I always admire the wisdom and swift rhetoric of my father's points.

- Though he looks best in brown (in my opinion), my dad refuses to wear it - he will only wear a shirt if it has a splotch of bright color on it. My favorite T-shirt of his has a neat row of peachy houses along a turquoise river and says 'København' - I wear it to school, sometimes. He was drawn toward California by its gem-like seas and Spanish tile - everywhere is an exercise in his preferred bright colors. My dad paints his days with a very lively palette, rarely within the confines of a line, but always with careful brushstrokes. In dreary circumstances, he reminds the rest of us to don our halcyon-hued glasses.  

This is the tiniest sample of all you inspire, Dad. Happy belated birthday!

The best time of day

is when I see this:

light filters through the beveled glass above the front door, casting a rainbow over the keys

Life is full of beautiful things. Thank you, God.

timekeeping: a tribute to high school

The metronome marks the jerks of life.

It pulses through the blue-gray halls, amplified by hefty speakers in the band room. It pounds across the flat football field, transforming into the thundering drums that echo down the hill and throughout town. 

Put, pot, put, pot. Increase the tempo.

The students, wrapped in blue-gray sweaters, migrate from class to class. They keep pace with the metronome, matching familiar footsteps. Put, pot, put, pot. The somber procession moves through the blue-gray halls.

The pulses cut their lives into tidy chunks - each activity corresponds to a put or a pot. Better finish within the allotted time. Rise, wash, dress, chew, think, chew, work, chew, work, sleep - next movement. How predictably one measure follows another!

The metronome and clock are kin, as safeguards of time and success. Coldly, they press forward. They do not lend themselves to the needy.

The blue-gray students walk to a variety of tempos: some set their metronomes to one pulse per hour. Others, the frenetic ones, prefer fifteen beats per second. Each sets the dial to a manageable beat.

Adagio appeals to the younger ones. Generous gaps between each pulse allow them to walk with rubato. Some eager beavers realize that their metronome-flouting days are numbered, so they rush through their measures, forgetting to phrase.

The metronome sneaks up on the juniors. For a while it had been gathering speed, but timekeeping hadn’t required such attention before. Now the pulses arrive with such velocity (or, in special instances, celerity) that juniors are tripping instead of walking. Blinking costs a beat. The catch-up period is dreadful - mostly graft. But that’s the only option on stage: keep playing!

One foot over the other - put pot put pot. The weary juniors jog through two semesters of etudes, building the endurance to survive all tempos.

When spring settles in, the metronome sleeps for the seniors. April fills the blue-gray halls with yellow and tan: light and bare legs. A dusting of pollen causes students sneeze in rapid succession (if a metronome could assign a tempo to the sneezes, what would it be)? There is time to wonder about useless things, like the tempo of successive sneezes. To gaze at things in wonder, and to create.

The metronome is silenced in June. This is a welcome pause from the marked jerks, until band camp rings in a new year:

"Managers! Fetch me the met!" requests the conductor as he stoops over a knot of black wire. The summoning of appropriate gadgetry and a full turn of the volume knob release the metronome.

In perfect time, the students draw their bows across the strings. Rosin clouds rise from the instruments, illumined by a streak of 10 A.M. sunlight from the doorway. One ear obeys the metronome, but the other is turned inward, to hear the heart. The resulting sound is the child of both ears.

They are contained, but free to express. The metronome jerks them to life.

why I must move to Scotland upon graduation

forget 101 Dalmations

"The golden retriever and its history were feted by 222 goldens and their masters who gathered from around the globe for a celebration in the breed's ancestral Scottish Highlands home in July. Hosted by the Golden Retriever Club of Scotland, The festival is held at the abandoned home of Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, who bred the first golden retriever." 
- courtesy of Yahoo News

Neue York

We passed through Hell Gate to enter Manhattan from Randall's island, and truly, driving in NYC was no heaven. We were two country bumpkins in a green shoe box, generating a symphony of horns.

After being liberated from our car, we had dinner with a friend who drove a cab in college. "If you're raised in Manhattan, you'll be sharp, that's for sure," he said, one hand on the wheel, suavely swerving through the city.

We stayed in a researcher's apartment for its approximation to Columbia. Our dank little refuge had a fantastic bookshelf, which overflowed with Urdu love poetry, physics textbooks, and the New Yorker. Wahoo!

The next day was ours to fill. Following a Columbia tour, we walked through Central Park to the Neue Galerie, the best art museum I've been to (maybe because I'm a Germanophile, maybe because of the rhubarb cake). The smallish space made each work more accessible - time to ponder and absorb. A handful of paintings by Gustav Klimt, my favorite artist, adorned the walls. An old man gestured to the painting below, telling his wife to look twice:

The Park at Kammer Castle (1910). Can you see the head dipping into the water?

I saw only a fat hedge, at first. All artworks are palimpsests.

The German secessionists were featured in a special exhibit. This group of artists - whose mediums varied from watercolor to wallpaper - sought to heal the world of the "negative aesthetic and social consequences of the Industrial Revolution." On display was a silver coffer commissioned by Gustav Mahler for his wife, Alma. Klimt painted Schubert at the Piano. How amazing to see these lives overlap!

We encountered a beautiful skylight:

shell-like colors

A note about our adventures on the Metro: people tend to avoid eye contact, but my mom kept disobeying this rule. She interviewed a group of model-like Norwegian tourists and complimented people on their babies. I am proud of her. The Metro also had somewhat of a crime scene: we emerged from a stairwell to hear a woman shrieking for help as she flailed after a shady man, who had stolen her cell phone. They sprinted out of the station before the passersby could comprehend her plea. :(

On our final morning, we decided to descend from Morningside Heights into Harlem and attend First Corinthian Baptist Church. My ears had never been so full of sound - praise was blasted at full throttle. Happy shouts of "Hallelujah!" were right in rhythm. As attendees of a comparatively silent Asian-American church, my mom and I were entranced.

I thought that the Bay Area was diverse, but New York sure is one batch of mixed nuts.

Yum, yum.

far east movement, continued

happy times at Quincy Market!

Cambridge

I love the Irving House, with its carpeted stairs, the Bengali cook (with a pretty vermillion streak), and stacks of novels (free for the taking!). It was a hop and a skip away from Harvard's Memorial Hall, where we ambitious young ones convened for an information session. Mira Nair, speaking to us from the opening video, encouraged all applicants: "You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain." ~

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match! This was the soundtrack to our week of college-touring. 

We located a natural foods shop called Life Alive, where dishes were dubbed "The Lover", "The Sufi Poet", or "Coconut Alive". The inside was crawling with green things, as was each plate. The food was inspiring - it left you radiant rather than indolent. Many people cringe at such hempy and nutritional-yeasty offerings, but the community of Cambridge was all for it! 

mushy nosh: "The Lover"

Smoothies in hand, Mom and I continued down Massachusetts Avenue. We strolled for over five miles. We intended to take a bus eventually, but we kept resetting our finish line. Stops at Berklee, NEC, and the Mary Baker Eddy library (APUSH applied, again!) filled out our afternoon. I meandered through New England Conservatory on my own, because my mom befriended the security guard in the lobby. I got lost in dark stairwell - all the exits were locked! - and found my way out again, led by the sound of a cello.

the Charles is the bluest river I've seen!

Stumbled upon the Borromeo String Quartet rehearsing in a closet-sized corner room

Williamstown

Mom and I spent so much time losing our way that we missed our rental car appointment. After a slightly harried, unforeseen trip to the airport to pick up another car (a lime-green shoebox), we began the journey to Williamstown, located in Massachusetts's farthest corner. We smuggled the free walnut cake from Irving House to sustain us, and thus began our most wearisome expedition yet - maneuvering the Mass. turnpike for three lightless hours. 

late-night arrival. Happy to see pillows

The roads were straight, but foreign. The highway was surrounded by scenic sights, I could tell, but night doused them in shadow (especially the lakes, which felt like abysses on both sides). Williamstown is situated at the end of the Mohawk Trail, a skinny road that twists past the Berkshires. Together we navigated, our glances never straying from the windshield. Our eyes were exhausted by the evening's travel, and our legs panged from the afternoon's. How happily we settled into our beds at the House on Main Street; thanking God for replenishing our patience, and anticipating the morning.

The House on Main Street

 The beauty of Williamstown is best conveyed by showing:

state-of-the-art facilities at Williams College, nestled in a village

nature's lace doilies

The image that lingers in my mind: Williamstown is a girl in a pristine lace frock, gamboling through a meadow. There's a whole spectrum of green on display, from jasper-hued mountains framing the town, to tea-colored grass blanketing each hill. Then, the white: the glowing early morning, the color of each carefully restored house, and the bowl of butter at breakfast.

We collected new acquaintances: a Virginia couple celebrating their 45th anniversary; a schoolteacher with very large eyes; a theatrical innkeeper-chef; a widow with a connection to California... My favorite guest was a 95-year-old man, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. The exchange of words gathered momentum as we fed ourselves eggs, grits, and Brazilian beans. Testy to begin, friends at fin.

conducting no one at Tanglewood :)

eastern expedition: Boston

I've only come to such places before in dreams. They say that when college students land in Boston, few leave, and I've caught the Beantown bug a year early.

The people here are civil to an unearthly degree. So many times have strangers bestowed upon us what my mom calls "travel mercies." The inn that we're staying at has a framed cross-stitch of Hebrews 13:2: "Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." I think that this is woven into the actions of all the Bostonians I've met so far.

It's inspired my mom and me to be generous, too:

1) Last night, our taxi driver - a man with a silver beard and a heavy accent - had spent two hours in the taxi queue before picking us up from Logan Airport. He had waited well into the night in hopes of making $25, at least. Instead, we requested a distance that would only yield $8. His frustration was evident, so we pressed a twenty into his hand, wishing him the best before he whizzed off into the night.

2) The homeless people here are sophisticated - they write poetry, solve crosswords, and exhibit random acts of courtesy. One man held the door for all entrants into the McDonalds on the Boston Commons. The restaurant had a customers-only bathroom policy, so I promptly purchased an apple pie. I found a happier eater in the doorman.

3) As we explored the northern edge of Beacon Hill, we came across a woman in the center of the street, ambling up the slope to her flat. She must have been a centenarian, for she looked and moved like dandelion fluff. A truck was hurtling toward her, so my mom rushed to her side, nearly knocking her over, and urged her to come onto the sidewalk. "I can't walk there," she said. "I fall on the bricks." We relieved her of her grocery bags and embarked on a stroll in wonderful company. She divulged for us the secrets of Beacon Hill: here, a Kennedy was shot, and there lives the Secretary of State.

Where else would one encounter a "Little Free Library"?

It's a town of bookworms. Readers are ubiquitous - they're easily spotted on the T, perched on steps, lounging on the cedar benches outside Harvard Yard, and at breakfast. Here, people are immersed in books to the same degree that they rub noses with their iPhones at home.  

History lives! Every few paces, I come upon some extraordinary piece of it. A glance askance revealed Sam Adams's gravestone; another located a framed flyer published by Rachel Carson (APUSH applied). We meandered through the alleys that once sheltered slaves.

Larry Bird enjoys some of the best street music I've ever heard. Simon & Garfunkel fuse with the 2Cellos. Ah.

At every park, I encounter civilians sprawled out on blankets at free concerts. The air is thick with both music and moisture. Buskers, professional opera companies, and sexy sax men sing out for all to hear. A true treat - fleeting beauty that I couldn't photograph.

My old math teacher - a Boston native - would exclaim "I do it from the haht!" to illustrate the accent for us. You've captured my haht, Boston!

spotted #2

"Music is love itself; it is the purest, most ethereal language of passion, showing in a thousand ways all possible changes of color and feeling; and though true in only a single instance, it yet can be understood by thousands of men -- who all feel differently." - Carl Maria* von Weber

*Why do so many German men have Maria as a middle name?

a seed and a flower:

passacaglia begins at 18:30!

moments with my mom

I haven't felt the pain of a stomachache in a long time. Today made me sad; I watched one hour melt into the next as I shuffled around the house, ineffective as can be. I was too tired to pick up my bow, open a book, sit at the piano, and do anything of use. I interrupted my mom's work by toddling into her office and moaning. She immediately set her task aside, plopped me onto the bed, and scurried to the kitchen to boil some ginger tea. In a zip she was back at my bedside with our static blanket (a fluffy cover that weighs around ten pounds), and she climbed in to hold me. My mom frequently makes these cuddle-visits. Usually they are very late at night, when my eyelids are too heavy to lift, and once in a while she will bring the sunshine with her in the morning. 

During the school year, she made serious efforts to rise with my brother and me, just to spend ten minutes with us in the kitchen. She would follow us to the door, pat both of our heads, and send us off with a reminder to "shine the salt and light." At lunchtime, I could always depend on seeing two gingham (or polka-dot... or flowered... ) lunch bags stacked together on the table outside the office, delivered by my dad. My mom would sometimes insert a napkin-note, especially on physics test days. That small table was heaped with lunch packs: Safeway bags, Bubee thermoses, tupperware with dumplings in them. All packed by mothers as assorted as the array.

On the long ride to my piano teacher's house, my mom snoozes next to me as I drive. Somehow, she can sleep soundly through the blaring radio (KDFC, usually) and my terrible braking. Her silent company soothes me as much as her loud kind. 

I feel like a canister into which she has poured her life, in hopes that I would do the same for others. 

spotted #1

"His liquid tenor rode above the rest of the men's voices, in the quivery way of oil on water." - from Carolyn Cooke's short story "The Sugar-Tit"*

*Slight twinge of embarrassment. But this had to be shared!

hep hep for the cep

Why did everyone want to be best friends with the mushroom?

cep/sep/

noun: An edible European and North American bolete mushroom.

In the dry woodlands of Italy grows a little mushroom,

In the dry foothills of Saratoga grows a small person.

The little mushroom has a smooth brown cap,

The small person has a frizzy brown head.

This cep is also called the penny-bun,

The Gloria is sometimes called the penny-saver.

Mushrooms spring up in the nighttime and disappear in a blink,

Gloria springs up at lunchtime and makes sad attempts at a wink.

When simmered in an herby broth, the cep tenderizes and sighs,

When simmered in a bubble bath, Gloria becomes happy and wise.

The cep, like all mushrooms, does not lay down roots.

The Gloria, like some girls, enjoys traversing in boots.

The cep pairs well with egg noodles and thyme,

The Gloria forgets to consistently rhyme.