Mikania

The very minute I had entered the Conservatory Plant Sale with Jane and Jeff, I split from my friends and made a bee-line towards the bromeliad table. After straining my neck and walking briskly around the outside of the horse-shoe table, I finally found what I had come to Capitol Hill for. And better yet, I had seven different pineapple plants to choose from. I took my time examining each one and selected one with the least damaged leaves, although it also contained the smallest and greenest fruit that might not ripen with the upcoming fall skies. Carefully carrying my coveted prize, I weaved in and out of the booths, trying my best not to stab strangers with sharp leaves that jutted out in all directions. If I was ever to become a comic book hero, I realized that this should be my weapon of choice. “Prickly Pineapple, the Piercinating! She’ll stab out your eyes and finish you off with her castration boots!”

After browsing through the booths over and over again, randomly running into my friends who were experiencing the same overwhelming feeling of “plant overload”, I finally managed to tear myself away from the drainage of money and make my way towards the exit and pay booth. As I crossed the small taped off section of lawn, fellow plant lovers who had previously expressed annoyance at being stabbed by my weapon suddenly turned into admirers of the small fruit proudly protruding from an otherwise unremarkable plant. What soon followed was the chaos otherwise known as the “gotta have it” phenomena compulsive buyers suffer from.

“Oh wow! A pineapple! Where’d you get that?”

“A pineapple! Where are they?!?”

“Where did you get that pineapple plant?”

“The bromeliads,” I said, no longer feeling overwhelmed by the selection of plants but rather by the demanding voices that came from all directions.

“Excuse me, miss. Can I have your price tags?” a volunteer, who had seemingly appeared from the air besides me, asked politely. Confused from the immediate flood of attention, I looked blankly at the short brown-haired man who was already trying to pull the plants out of my hand and grab their price tags.

“Hey, how much is that pineapple and where’d you get it?”

“What?”

“Can I have your price tags?”

“Oh sure, here…. The pineapples are over with the bromeliads.”

“That’ll be $27,” a small elderly woman told me after I gave her a slip of paper the other volunteer had handed me. Glancing down at the paper for the first time, I saw it had the total of my purchase scrawled out in abrasive letters. I handed my money to the smiling woman, gazing at the fluffy white hair she had piled on her head.

After she handed me my change and I was about ready to exit, I realized that a commotion at the back corner of the bromeliad table had erupted. It was where the pineapples were tucked away. A mass of people had gathered around the corner, most coveting their bruised, battered and rather ugly plants while they watched a pair of women argue bitterly over who had seen the last available plant first. “You racist bitch! Just ’cause I’m black doesn’t mean you can steal what belongs to me!” one of the women cried. In the next instant, the white middle-aged woman was tugging on one end of the pot while the black-middle aged woman tugged back on the other end, both screaming at each other.

“Wow, Min! You really bring out the worst in people,” Jane observed as she handed a wad of cash to another elderly lady who also sat at the cashier booth.

“I don’t know why everyone wants these plants all of a sudden,” I wondered aloud.

“Because you’re a hip trendsetter,” Jane responded jokingly. With that, we exited the plant sale and made our way to the parked car where Jeff was already waiting. We walked along the peaceful and sunny sidewalk, admiring the park waterfalls and sculptures while discussing a possible future visit to the Conservatory. As we walked, I could hear the argument fade behind me. It reminded me of my Senior year of High School and the horrid middle-aged beanie baby customers who pettily bickered over anything and everything. No matter what unimportant reason started the bickering, they often found excuses to verbally attack the staff at Hallmark. As I usually hadn’t worked the beanie hell shift, I had never been attacked. Others were less fortunate, such as my friend Kim who had been brought to tears at least three times and suffered countless other ferocious attacks. At these memories, a shiver tumbled down my spine. Fortunately, it was forgotten the instant we saw Jeff’s purple monstrosity of a plant perched atop our deep green car, making it look as if the car had a stylish cascade of hair.

First there was my random assortment of plastic necklaces from the 80’s that I had adored before I was in school. I would never wear any of these necklaces, and haven’t since Kindergarten, but they brought back memories of shopping with my mother at the Bon Marche and coming home with a bag of work clothes for her and one plastic pastel necklace for me. After much indecision, the necklaces went into my “To Ebay or Throw Away” pile on the bed.

I like to call the transition from my current apartment to my future apartment The Great Move. I’ve given it this name not because it’s the first move I’ve ever made, nor because it’s the last, but because it’s the first move where I have to downsize all of my possessions. Most of my friends haven’t had to experience this yet as they are on good terms with their parents and can keep their unneeded but wanted belongings in their old rooms. I, however, am not on good terms with my father and accordingly was forced to either move every last possession of mine or suffer having him throw them away. I choose to take everything that I owned when I first moved into my current apartment, including the 13+ giant tubs of beanie babies that consist of my inheritance. Now that Tyler and I have found the most perfect of perfect apartments to live in, which so happens to be only 505 square feet (our current place is about 700), I am forced to analyze the volume of all my possessions and try to decide what to keep and what not to keep.

Then there were the micro machines and die cast cars. These brought memories of pushing them on the kitchen floor in an attempt to see how fast and far they could go before our terrier (or terror) mutt attacked them. Since they were small and wouldn’t consume much space, I placed the mirco machines and my first ever die cast car (a silver DeLorean with doors that can be opened or closed) into my new and much smaller memory box. The remaining cars went into a paper box full of small toys that I am going to try and give away to trick-or-treaters this upcoming Halloween.

Because of the 13+ giant tubs of beanie babies, downsizing all of my possessions is a ghastly task. I did what I would in most circumstances- I tried to prep myself for the work by starting with the simplest task first. The simplest thing to downsize just so happened to be what I call my memory box. I used one of those plastic under the bed containers and filled it with random bits of junk from my childhood on through my last days of high school. It also ended up containing a couple of items from my mother that I inherited when she died. Most of the contents wouldn’t be bought on Ebay, which in my mind means they’re completely useless junk. However, when I opened up the contents of the box and dumped them onto the bed, I soon remembered the reason why each item had made its way into my memory box in the first place.

Items that might be considered important- such as my high school diploma- went into the new memory box next, with the cars filling in the wasted space of plastic groves beneath. A bag of marbles I had loved, tapes from past orchestra concerts and collectable coins given as gifts took up the rest of the space, leaving a little left for the odd assortment of pig and westie figurines I had bought my mother for one gift-giving occasion or another. My mother’s old glasses, random key chains, and other junk that had indifferent memories attached went into the “To Ebay or Throw Away” pile.

After I had sorted all the contents of the former memory box into their various destinations, I carefully examined the contents of my new memory box and found myself satisfied. I then decided to throw out the items that didn’t make it into the box or find another useful purpose. While collecting the random trinkets and junk into an old grocery bag, I found myself wondering how it was possible to attach so many memories to inanimate objects. Because each item I had kept, no matter how small and useless, had a pleasant memory attached to it, I soon realized that the contents of my box were not junk but physical memories.

A memory, whether physical or mental, is a hard thing to throw away.

Does listening to home brewed slippery jazz funk while eating falafel or cheesecake at a café sound appealing to you also?

Message Machine will be performing at Mr. Spot’s Chai House in Ballard tomorrow, Friday, September 12th from 8-11 PM. Click here for more details.

If you’re into the Indie scene in Seattle, don’t miss this chance to see them.

I often tell non-natives that there are two seasons here- three months of warm sun and nine months of cold, wet overcast days. Most of the time I feel like I’m exaggerating, but nothing seems closer to the truth today than this. It seems like we had a transition period of three or so days where it was a bit colder while still managing to be sunny. But even so, the weather change seemed to come out of nowhere.

I have mixed emotions about the return of our typical Seattle weather. On one hand, I’m happy it’s raining because this summer has been too dry. On the other hand, I’m kind of sad that we’re moving out of Summer as it means I’ll have to start German 202 (nothing makes me shudder more than this). I’m also going to lose the joy of eating all of my freshly grown tomatoes and basil. How sad!

The adjustment between Summer and Rainy (my name for the season that is considered three seasons elsewhere in this world) is the hardest for me. Just when I’ve acclimated to the hot days, the cold and rainy days hit me out of nowhere. Fortunately, I have a longer season to adjust to for the cold days. But, then again, out of nowhere the temperatures seemingly skyrocket and I find myself sweating buckets for the first month of summer. Deodorant may keep me from smelling bad, but it sure doesn’t keep me from sweating like many advertisements have informed me it should. (Does that mean its false advertisement? Can I sue and put myself through college because I bought said product to keep myself from sweating and it didn�t work?)

Anyway, it certainly looks like Summer is officially over and Rainy has officially begun. I better get off my ass and go dig up those pepper plants I wanted to overwinter for next year. Ah, the joys of a P-Patch…

P.S. The title is from Tom Waits’ “Rain Dogs”.

Last night, I had a heart-wrenching nightmare that my dog, Mary, had died. If I ever woke up in a cold sweat, it would have been then. I vividly remember my eyes flaring open while my chest constricted from a mixture of stress and fear. When the throbbing of my heart began to recede, I could hear my dog�s congested snoring to the right of me. Unsure of reality, I gingerly moved my hand towards the floor and felt for her warm white fluff. My fingertips touched her ear and I then rubbed her head, causing her to start from her slumber.

Maybe I have no faith in this world, but I always imagine that were anyone to be in my place they’d be relieved when my dog dies. She’s old (albeit healthy), and has had a good life. But most of all, it’s not easy taking care of a dog while struggling with school-related financial troubles. I have lost count of the times someone has told me to get rid of my dog because she’s a financial burden. Their advice may be practical, but do they understand what Mary means to me?

Mary has been my companion since I was ten years old. She has stood by me for over half of my lifetime and is the only true friend I had before college. None of my friends, not even Tyler, have been there for my most pleasant childhood memories. Mary was by my side during the lazy summer days I spent with my nose shoved in a book, swinging under grape vines. She’s the only one who knows the delightful taste of the blue grapes I would strain to reach, and how they popped in one’s mouth with a burst of flavor that I have not found elsewhere. Only Mary was there for me throughout my three years of High School- the same three years that saw my mother’s beautiful body turned into a crippled and hunched shell of pain. And most important of all, Mary was the only one who stayed by my mother’s side during the long hours I worked throughout High School and after I had moved to the dorms for college. Not even my father can claim that he spent as much time taking care of my mother as my dog did. She may not have been able to cook fish sticks, but the extent of Mary’s selfishness was to sit next to my mother in order to receive attention. That simple act of constantly being by my mother�s side, comforted her during the peak of her pain.

I have vowed to return my dog’s loyalty with a loyalty of my own. I will take care of her and attempt to provide the best life possible while concentrating on the joyful moments we share with one another. Money is a small price to pay for the joy that Mary brings me on a day to day basis. Most people cannot understand this, but that’s okay. All that matters is that I understand.

So why all of the depressing posts? The period of September and October is a time of reflection for me. It’s the time that my mother’s health took a major turn for the worst three years ago, followed by a choice or two that I regret. What I write here helps me reflect upon my past and my present. It also helps me continue my healing and self-improvement. It’s a somber time of reflection for me, a time that trumpets the coming winter months which often dampen my spirits. But Spring always follows, and with it all of my favorite flowers and the ability to play in the soil for yet another year.

This morning I went to the Kinko’s near The Metro for work-related business. I’ve been going to this Kinko’s for work related business so much recently that all the morning people know my face, and most know my name. Every time I go to Kinko’s to pick up something, I leave a little earlier than I’d leave for work, walk west to Roosevelt and then south until I hit 45th. When I get to 45th, I turn the corner around the former video rental store and make my way towards Kinko’s. Decorating the vacant video store are faded and paint chipped carnival columns that create a gaudy and misplaced feeling. I always examine these columns as I pass, wondering about their history. I often find the need to know what type of store found a use for them, as I’m almost positive the video store wasn’t responsible.

When I turn the corner, there is always a big man in a sleeping bag nestled in the rain-protected niche the front entrance offers. I usually exchange a friendly “hi” with this man if he’s awake. But sometimes, he’s passed out and smells of cheap whiskey and piss. It’s a smell I’ve decided to call “Bum Piss” as it seeps from every tucked away corner on Roosevelt and the other streets near where I live. On these occasions, I walk by thinking of what cheap alcohol I’d pass out with if I were cold, lonely and on the streets of a cynical city. Tequila is my alcohol of choice since it makes a really tasty drink known as Margaritas. But is cheap tequila the cheapest there is? I’d probably try to maximize my money and buy the cheapest, hardest alcohol available. And yes, if I was living on the street and had no one to take care of me or to take care of, I would probably buy alcohol and drink myself to oblivion at every chance I had. Wouldn’t every other person do the same, whether they want to admit it or not? Even the pompous businessmen walking the streets of downtown Seattle who always make it a point to yell, “get a job!” at the bums aren’t protected from the same fate should they fall into similar circumstances.

Often, when I walk by the man a second time on my way to work with my box of copies tucked under my arm, I nod to him and smile. When I pass and he remains in his sleeping bag, receding unseen, I wonder if anyone else smiles at him? Do the bus patrons standing in front of him make it a point to ignore his very existence? They probably do, as I often do the very same thing with other bums. But this bum is different for some reason. He has never asked me for money, and has never cat called me or yelled creepy sexually suggestive comments in my direction. He simply smiles and gives me a big cheerful “Hello”.

For some reason, I’ve never stopped to talk to this man, even though every time I pass him I want to. I want to ask him his name. I want to ask him where he’ll sleep when the vacant building opens as a bike shop and the owners decide to chase him away. I want to take him to a restaurant or caf� and buy him a meal where he can sit and enjoy the soft music and warmth. I want to hear his story, and then I want to go on my way to work and make a difference in this world. But instead, I pass him and continue on my way.

If you notice anything a bit off about this site, it’s because I’m in the process of moving everything from Blogger to Movable Type.

Sure, Blogger is a good service, especially if you just want a blog to update and don’t have anything remotely complicated you want to do to it. Since the beginning of this blog, it’s been a constant struggle with setting up everything how I want it on Blogger. I guess some of the stuff I wanted to do with my site was a bit too complicated. The comments problem pushed me over the edge. With the php for Blogkomm. I had to have my archives in my root directory, thus creating a really messy directory as I have a lot of other pages on this website. As you might realize, I am definately not one for messy directories.

So, I spent most of yesterday loading MT onto my server and most of this morning setting it up. Things still need to be worked on, so you’ll probably see some funky stuff while I’m setting everything up. Just bare with me in the next day or so and then everything will be back to normal and I can move onward to more interesting posts.

Today, in the year 1949 at a hospital in Kansas City, my grandparents’ first child was born- my mother. I’ve never been to Kansas, but all of the family pictures I’ve seen depict a flat and treeless backdrop with gravel roads. It’s the kind of backdrop that one would imagine to be various shades of brown if the photos were in color. Of course, I can’t forget the close-up photos in my grandmother’s photo albums of cars dented beyond drivability from chunks of hail “the size of golf balls”. I imagine it was a dry and dusty day, the kind of late summer day the natives cherished before the golf ball hail thundered down and unleashed its anger on shingles, windows and cars. When I think of Kansas, I think of when my plane from Seattle landed on the airfield strip in Salt Lake City and how I looked out to find a tumble weed rolling alongside my window from the force of the plane. Looking through the plane window, I thought of the stories my mother told me of how she and her sister pretended tumble weeds were horses and how they would corral them in the garage. My grandfather would come home after a strenuous day of work and open the door to have tumble weeds pour out on to him. After suffering from a mammoth allergy attack, he would storm into the house to find his two golden haired daughters playing quietly with their horse marbles and pencil corral. His heart would melt with pride and love and he would yet again forget to punish them as harshly as he had intended. Because lack of experience necessitated it, I transformed Utah into my family’s Kansas by flattening the landscape and adding wheat fields where Mormons flourished. I hated Utah because it was too dry and lacked any sort of natural green, yet I think I would love Kansas if only because a part of me came from it and will always belong there.

Today, in the year 1981, my mother probably sat in her favorite arm chair and sung to me in a screeching voice only love made melodic. Her cocker spaniel mix, Suzi, a mild mannered tan dog about the age of ten, probably sat at the feet of her chair, gazing longingly at her former throne I then occupied. I would have been exactly three months and two days old. I don’t remember what life was like then, but as I think back to this day twenty-one years ago, I slowly paint the picture from memories. My mother’s chair was a small brown recliner with a very soft and fuzzy fabric. The fabric was so soft that it rivals the fleece blankets of today. Over time, the fuzz wore off and was replaced by bare patches of crisscrossing brown threads. But back then, the chair was much newer and would have lacked any bare patches worn down from years of hands resting against the arms and years of a young child climbing every which way on it. Her chair would have faced the large living room window of our cozy one-story home, a window that gazed upon the tree laden cul-de-sac and its peaceful neighborhood. In a few months time, the window would show a postcard image of a quaint snow-dappled neighborhood in a small town that made cows and grapes its livelihood. In front of my mother’s window to the world would have been a humble color TV with a round dial used to change channels. The TV would have been perched atop of a skinny metal stand and would have either been showing “Days of Our Lives” or the blackened reflection of my mother rocking me to sleep. I couldn’t have qualified as a birthday present for my mother, as I was born three months earlier, but she would have disregarded this fact and would have told my tiny ears over and over again that I was the best birthday present, Christmas present, mother’s day present, and general everyday present that she had and would ever have.

Today, in the year 2003, I wonder what my mother would be doing. I would probably have taken the day off from work and taken her- and maybe my father- somewhere special. We might have gone to Mt. Rainier, assuming she would have used this week for vacation. Or perhaps we would have taken our family dogs camping in the Olympic Peninsula. These were the only places our small and fragile family went for vacation, but there are places I will always cherish and someday drag my children (if I have any) to. If she hadn’t used her vacation time for this week, then I would have baked her a cake of her choosing, which would have been her favorite lemon bundt cake spiked with extra lemon juice and drizzled with lemon glaze. We would have then had a low-key family celebration where my father and I would not argue and where we would take my dearest mother out to the restaurant of her choosing. We would then end the day with presents, cake and ice cream. She would have a small slice of cake topped with vanilla ice cream. My father and I would have large slices topped with chocolate.

But, what really happened today was that I woke up early in the morning and lazed in bed for an extra hour thinking that I wanted to pay tribute to my mother, but not knowing how. The rest of the day followed very typically, until I finally returned home. When I opened up my “miscellaneous file”, intending to drop in a receipt of payment for Tyler’s housing application, my memorial service pamphlet from my mother’s funeral fell out with a battered recipe for her favorite Lemon Cheescake Pie. I’m not sure how this recipe made its way into my possession, as my father had insisted on keeping her recipe stash to himself and not letting me so much as see them, but its presence brought tears to my eyes. It probably means nothing. It probably doesn’t mean what most would tell me once they saw the tears streaming down my cheeks- that she’s watching over me. Yet, I still find it a fitting tribute to make that Lemon Cheescake Pie tonight. So, today in the year 2003, I am going to fill my spacious and soon-to-be former apartment with the smell of sweetened condensed lemon and share one of my mother’s beloved recipes with Tyler and any friends who drop by. Perhaps I will even offer some cheesecake pie to the landlord I hate so much.

Okay, nothing good to read again. Sorry about that. I set up the RSS feed on my site and changed the comments thingy from BlogSpeak to Blogkomm. Nothing against BlogSpeak, but I didn’t like how it was hosted on a server different from mine and how I had limited control over the layout. I also didn’t like the blatant use of promotional links on the pop-up window and how he was going to start placing “text ads” in the windows. It’s a great service is you don’t want something complicated, you like the pop-ups and you don’t mind the text ads. However, it’s not the kind of thing I was looking for.

Speaking of pop-ups, I really like how they keep the main page clean and free of gunk, but I decided that they weren’t practical from a reader’s perspective in case someone has pop-up preventive software or a general thing against them. Thus, I made the sacrifice of losing my three comments and moved to Blogkomm. Hopefully this will be the one I stick with and I won’t have to go through yet another change. Luckily, he’s kind enough to have set everything up so my comments stay in their own file on my server- that way they’re never truly lost as long as I back stuff up once in a while. There’s something to be said for having stuff on your own server and not someone else’s.

I’m what I call a “reviser”. I’d like to say that I have all of my college courses to thank for this, but I know that isn’t true. Ever since I found I loved writing (age of 11), I lingered over every word, tasting it and then changing it until I found the perfect one. Two days later, what I had written went into my scrap notebook and I started anew.

Anyway, my problem is this: every time I write a post for this site, I work really hard on it and then post it. The issue I’m having is that when I read the post over the next day before I post something else, I have problems with some of the word placement, etc. I then re-write my previous post and re-publish it, forcing myself never to look at it again lest I want to re-write yet another time.

I was quite happy with how the first part of “Defeated” turned out, but I’m very unsatisfied with the second part and have not been able to move on to the third and final part until I’m happier with the middle of the story. That said, I am going to revise Part II tonight and then start on Part III. After this, I’m going to pass a new rule for myself regarding this site; I will no longer revise anything once it is posted. I’m still new to this blogging thing and am struggling a bit with how different it is from my usual writing habits (which consist of nothing unless I take a class to force myself to write), but I think that it’s been helping kick me in the butt to write and is a valuable tool for my improvement. Hopefully, over time, I’ll get better at forming my sentences and choosing that perfect word from the beginning with my new rule. If not, oh well. I can always revise stories written outside of this blog.

By the way, Tyler brought home a lovely new printer for me yesterday. I was expecting an older model HP printer that would have been collecting dust somewhere in his house, but this was actually a still packaged beauty that had supposedly been special ordered for Steve Jobs and somehow didn’t make it to him. Instead, it sat in Tyler’s father’s office (he’s some sort of VP for HP) and collected dust. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Well, to dash the impressive quality a bit, the special order consisted of changing the front cover, which is designed to have a photo of your choice on it, from the standard shipping cover to one with a jaguar print. I suppose this was in honor of the jaguar version of OS X. I love my new printer and have now defiled its Steve Jobsness by hooking it up to my PC. I figure it won’t go to printer hell, just purgatory, as I will also print from my iBook on it.