> tapioca world tour

Tonight we watched Lost in Translation, which is the first time I’ve seen it since it came out in theatres back in October 2003. Needless to say, it was just as good as it was the first time, and made me cry just as much as it did back then….that is to say, I swallowed hard rocks down my throat all through the ending, then took a shower with the intention of crying in privacy, but when the hot water hit I forgot I had come in there to cry and instead became so overwhelmed by the warmth of the water and the awareness that I had only seven minutes to enjoy it before the water heater pooped out that I forfeited the entire crying endeavor.

It’s just such a sad scene, you know? Where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson say goodbye in the streets of Tokyo one last time, and you know they’re both going back to unhappy marriages, and you can’t help them but you want to; specifically, you want them to help each other. But there’s no better ending — I mean, it’s realistic, ending like that –but it still makes you cry, you know what I mean?

You totally know what I mean.

KWID-nuhngk, (noun)
One who is curious to know everything that passes; one who knows or pretends to know all that is going on; a gossip; a busybody.

Oh my lord, it’s so freezing in Northern California. Since no one turns heat on here, or even knows where their furnaces are located, houses are even colder inside. Such is the case tonight. I’m huddled under a down comforter in the living room, wearing two shirts, one sweater and one sweatshirt. I might as well be back home. The only difference is that here, the sun is still strong enough to give you a sunburn during the day, and there’s no snow at night. But at least at home we have heat.

Today we drove up to San Jose for J.’s ice hockey game. Lots of women slamming other women into walls. It made me want to skate. Or at least pick up a stick and smack something 70 yards across a room.

I’m just about ready to go home now.

Beacause the cinematography was cool.
Because the plot was great.
Because it’s yet another brilliant coming-of-age movie, since, as C. stated so accurately, “they’re all so sexualy frustrated now and going through puberty.” And the love story subplots don’t end like proper fairy tales, or Hollywood films — they end realistically, with adolescent confusion and heartache.

Needless to say, I loooooved it.

So go see Harry Potter with your friend from college who you haven’t seen in a few years because she lives several thousand miles away, and who you know will be pregnant or already a mother the next time you do see her. (We’re all so adult now, it’s frightening.)

PS — I finally thought of an idea for a film, but due to intellectual copyright issues, I can’t state it here. MUAH-HA-HA!!!

i’ve ceased being tired long ago.
now it’s just me and the midnight airplanes over this hollow house.
while everyone’s out enjoying everyone else,
i’m clutching my solitude like a long lost brother, but that’s another story.
on the floor, calm silence, thin dust.
the black dog with me dreams for both of us.

– because it’s blasphemous. When you gamble on Thanksgiving instead of giving thanks, you lose. You lose twenty dollars, actually. To your friends’ downstairs neighbor’s visiting mother.

I’m glad they invited us for dinner, though. J. and I were passively resigned to finding Jamaican food, but the turkey and cranberry sauce and potatos and beans and pies downstairs were way better. There were two moms, two daughters, the two daughters’ husbands, us two neighbors, and seven dogs in the house. SEVEN. Yeah, I’m not even kidding. The evening would have been perfect had I just abstained from playing poker with everyone after the meal. Oh well, serves me right. I’m going to bet with rubber band booty from now on.

Cluck cluck, turkeys are we…

crepuscular krih-PUS-kyuh-luhr, (adj.):
1. Of, pertaining to, or resembling twilight; dim.
2. (Zoology) Appearing or active at twilight.

I think of the Word of the Days like horoscopes: each has something to portend. Crepuscular was yesterday’s word; today’s word is repast, a meal, which is appropriate for this day of thanks.

Berkeley is cold today — only 61 degrees. Beats the winter storms at home, though. I sat in Bernard Maybeck’s gorgeously designed church this morning as everyone around me stood up and talked about what they’re grateful for. I did the same, but silently.

Enjoy your pie today, good people, while I eat take-out Jamaican food in Alameda. California’s a weird place, and I do miss my family right now (despite the fact that there’s only three of us) but I’m happy to still be on vacation. Cheers.

69

My gracious hosts have made the most of my last few days in Kona, despite my lack of energy resulting from food poisoning, or psychosymatic gastrointestinal problems, whatever. Yesterday C. and I went down to 69 (I don’t remember what it’s really called, but 69 refers to some aspect of the highway or mile marking) where the waves are calmer, to go swimming at sunset. It was rather awesome to float on soft waves for an hour. Made me forget my body entirely. (E., remember watching the clouds from the hill at the Arboretum in July? I noticed a spot on my retina, a black spot that followed my line of vision wherever I looked in the sky. It bothered me then, but you said I’d stop noticing after time. I did stop noticing — until now, lying face-up on the waves, watching the clouds again. It’s like having a ghost beside me all the time.)

After swimming, we climbed on these funky tree limbs while the sun set.

Then we took trippy photos with my slow-synch flash.

Babies are cool

Fast-forward to this morning. C. & G.’s nice Swedish neighbor came over, bringing her baby whom we’ve been playing with all week. She mirrored C.’s hand gestures with the concentrated effort most 5-month-olds don’t have. It was pretty cute. There are so many nice people here.

Later, we went to a sacred ground. Back in the day, if someone committed a crime, they could run for this place. If they made it without getting caught first, they’d be forgiven. If caught before reaching the sacred site, they’d probably be killed. Fun, eh? So there were lots of statues to the gods here, surrounded by hard black lava, palm trees and tidepools with black crabs that I had previously sworn were scorpions. We found a bench, on which people had placed offerings to the gods. Flowers, coconuts, palm leaves, etc.

The search for sea turtles

Next, and after much encouragement, I agreed to go snorkeling with G. — minus the snorkel. There were sea turtles in this water, and we were determined to find them. We had to leap in the water over the coral reef, so as not to kill it. G. jumped first, then I jumped.

Swimming over coral reefs was just like those double spreads in National Geographic make it out to be: pretty awesome. Lots of black and yellow fish. It was like climbing into one of those fishtanks in the lobby of your local Chinese restaurant — only cooler, because just as the sun was about to set, G. spotted a baby sea turtle on the ocean bottom. We let it swim up for air, and G. swam over to pet it. I wasn’t as bold, content enough to watch the adorable thing swim around underwater, two feet from me.

The moral of the story is Hawaii is awesome, and my friends are cooler than most other people who exist. Amen.

James and I sat around the house all day. ALL DAY. We did nothing. NOTHING. It was pretty awesome.

My stomach is still recuperating from either the oreo-berry-mousse or the steak from last night. I don’t think it remembers how to process meat very well. The afternoon was full of naps and finishing Murakami’s “Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world”, which I didn’t like at all. Nica, I like you, but I don’t like Murakami. I don’t care how popular he is. His books depress me, and that’s the last thing I need on a tropical island.

Started painting — G. has graciously shared his gesso’d wood and oil pastels. I’m not finished yet, but will be tomorrow. I forgot how much I enjoy painting.

Another 85 degree day, another cheese and avocado sandwich. I could just sleep and sleep and sleep. I honestly don’t even know what day it is.

i wake up ill, but it passes. inside, everything is still:
canvasses cling to the walls. sharp pink flowers in a glass vase sway.

you think i can’t hear you but i know you’re home,
and it’s cold and you’re sitting in the dark. scream to the world
long enough and you’ll be heard. it doesn’t mean i have any words

to give you, or can bend this light so many thousand miles
into your bedroom, or would even want to, even though i do.
regardless, i know you

well enough by now to understand you could use a piece of
this white heat, this black earth, this collossal sky full
of our disgarded thoughts and a few yellow birds.

on a lump of cooled lava i’m feeling a perfect salt breeze
that is mine alone. there will be time to share some warmth - in clouds, in snow -
when i get home.

Just discovered Audrey Kawasaki and John Copeland. Do yourself a favor and check them out.

The waves pounded my head down against the bottom of the sea. Sand got in between every strand of my hair, every inch of my body. It took three hours to get it out of the bikini. The ocean here is a lot more powerful than anything I’ve seen before; scared of being forcibly pulled out, or under, I opted instead to stand on the beach and shoot photos of the sunset. Here’s a short video clip you can watch to get a better idea of how it looked and sounded. The guys I went swimming with are the ones at the end, getting pounded by a wave.

We went up on the volcano — G. and I, to see his hippie pals who sleep in a tent and have been hired to clear off some rich peoples’ land. The boys had made mocassins and bows and arrows; I got to shoot a few, but they never made it to the target.

“I want to be a mountain man,” G. told C. later that night. “I want to make mocassins and build stone walls and shoot bows and arrows and sleep on the ground and not use soap.” I had to admit that, minus the hygiene factor, it’s a pretty alluring lifestyle. Especially if you’re living on the side of an active volcano.

It’s another gorgeous day, and I have effectively forgotten Boston. It’s for the best. The only thing to concentrate on here is the sun and the sea and how many scones and mangos I can eat in one day. I’ve met some really cool people out here, from all over the place. Tonight C. and James and I are going swimming in a calm area of the shore enclosed by rocks. I’ve decided to wear the same skirt every day. I can understand why people are drawn to this island: the trees and sun and ocean give a perspective you can’t get in snow and freezing air. Everything here is light; that’s how I want to be.

We walked down to the beach last night. The wave swells are huge. I know nothing about waves or ocean currents so I didn’t pretend to; I just watched the water crashing into black lava rocks and thought about how the ocean is so much bigger than us, and could crush us in an instant. The undertow is so strong we can’t really swim, except in tidepools. The current would pull us out indefinitely.

C. is beautiful and chill and awesome as ever, and I’m so grateful she has let me come here. Her man G. is a philosopher/artist/scientist/carpenter, but most of all, a thinker. We stayed up til 2a discussing the algorithms that create patterns on shells, which he likes to reproduce on canvas. He busted out his cellular anatomy textbook for seashells and tried explaining it to me. Today we looked at some giant black-and-yellow spider that can probably kill you if you mess with it. I’m very happy to be here.

I have some interesting pals. Ben is blogging from Africa right now, and N. has recently launched her activist-focused web response to New Orleans, to which you can contribute your thoughts or news or links.

I’ve been so tired. We slept very little last night. Spent all day trying to sleep on the futon in the living room. I lost all motivation to get up, or go outside, or anything. I’m just so exhausted. The dogs started freaking out. They’re worried about me. “Aint no thing, dogs,” I told them, but they didn’t believe me. They yelped and jumped up on my head. I pushed them down, but they jumped up again. They started howling. I howled back. Dogs are perceptive creatures. I wish I could hang out with them all the time.

In other news, I can’t get this sappy country song of J.’s out of my head.

Something’s off today. Things are out of balance. All the trains on BART decided to break down this morning — as I was on them. I got stuck, the ride took an hour and a half. I got to the airport with 25 minutes to spare, but shockingly, they wouldn’t let me on the plane. “You’re too late,” the woman said. “You missed the plane.” “No I didn’t,” I answered, getting mad. “It doesn’t leave for another 25 minutes.” “That’s the same thing as missing it,” she said. I couldn’t believe it. I also couldn’t believe it when the man in front of me, whose plane for Boston left in 20 minutes, got rushed on with no problem. “You have to stand in that line [motions to really long line] to get a standby ticket.”

I was pissed, but consented. Maybe there’d be another plane in a few hours. No, not today. After 10 minutes standing in line #2, I got up to the same woman I had just dealt with. “I have bad news for you,” she said. “There are no more direct flights to Kona until Friday. The best I can do is to get you on a flight tomorrow, but you have to fly through LA.” What she neglected to explain is that I’ll have to travel for 10 hours straight, to a destination 5 hours away. I got really mad, but since I haven’t as of yet embraced my sense of entitlement, I just put my chin down on the counter in defeat and stared at her instead of demanding, at full volume, to be let on the bloody plane, which still hadn’t left yet.

I need to work on being assertive. I’ll never be a successful global multimedia producer if I don’t learn to boss people around.

In better news, it’s another beautiful day. It’s my friend’s birthday, but instead of partying, she’s busy designing a sustainable houseboat for her architecture class tonight, so it’s just me and the dogs, kickin it.

Yesterday I got to meet up with RR, my old companero, with whom I alienated all the elitist chics and professors at Smith College. She still smokes like a used gun and curses like a sailor; the only difference is that now she’s got a husband, a spiffy job at a law firm, and is working on getting a Harvard MBA. I’m just some shmuck on vacation from my nonprofit. We drank tea and 7-up and wondered out loud when we were ever gonna “make it”. At Smith, they teach you you will make it. You will be a CEO. You will be an international executive, an investment banker, a producer, a diplomat, a high-ranking corporate economist, a brain surgeon, a chemical engineer. There’s not a lot of emphasis on the arts, but the general Smith mantra still stands in any industry: work, work, work, don’t sleep, work more, and expect greatness. Because chances are, you’re smarter than most of your coworkers. Who are probably mostly men. Conquer! Devour! Beat them! Prevail!

Smith taught us to be vultures. I’m still learning how to tear the flesh off my prey — or at least the customer service reps for United Airlines.

I went walking alone tonight, much to the disappointment of the dogs. A young hip dude stood on the corner outside McDonald’s, staring in awe at the sky, as did the people inside McDonald’s, chewing on their cheeseburgers by the window. Everyone was taking photos. Many people were wearing shorts. Alameda’s an interesting town: every house looks different from the one beside it — adobe, victorian, duplex, Penna-Dutch style brick, you name it. Each house looks like it belongs in a different city, like it was picked up and dropped in this awkward postmodern abstract painting which is Northern California, complete with palm trees and the beach and organic cafes beside In-and-Out drive-thrus. I could never live here, but it’s the perfect place to be on vacation. Second, maybe, to Hawaii, which I’ll write all about on Tuesday. Muah-ha-ha!!

Today we took the dogs to the beach. More photos live here. It was sunny and the water was warm. Now I’m alone while J. refs a couple hockey games. It’s just me and the iPood and the dogs and all the sand on my keyboard. I’m going to ride the bike down to the beach to take sunset shots, and tomorrow I get my first motorcycle lesson.

I know, this is a boring post. What can I say? Nothing.

I’m very tired. Ry, bless him, drove to my house at 5am last night, after getting back from his gig. We talked about stuff, and instead of sleeping he told me jokes that made me choke with laughter until the sun came up. Then we went to the airport, where I proceeded to have some interesting flights:

From Boston to Denver, I sat next to two pleasant, middle-aged men. From what I could gather, one worked for Apple, or at least knew people who worked for Apple. “You’re not gonna believe this,” he whispered to the other man, giddy, “but Intel’s soon to release a chip which will work as an entire operating system, AND it supports linux!”

“Whoa…” the other guy said.
“I know. This is gonna shake up the world!” giggled the Apple guy. I went back to sleep.

From Denver to Oakland, I sat next to a 19-year-old girl and another middle-aged guy. The middle-aged guy spent the entire 2.7 hours chatting up the 19-year-old girl, including a lengthy explanation of all the marital problems he had with his ex-wife.

Weird, dude.

Tonight J. and I went to the same Thai restaurant I used to frequent when I lived in North Berkeley. It was like a weird flashback to 2001. “I’m having a moment! I’m having a moment!” I kept saying that as we drove past my old street, past the Cheeseboard, past Andronico’s and the good burrito place. Despite the old memories, I was left with the same feeling I had when I lived here years ago regarding California: I could take it or leave it. I love the food and the weather, and the food and the weather, and the food, but I just don’t belong here. Fortunately I’m currently staying with fellow east coasters who feel the same way. I’m also staying with two incredibly friendly dogs and one disaffected cat.

Needless to say, I’m happy I’m here. It’s nice to be thousands of miles from winter, and all that other coldness.

(which I won’t sing again until I buy my own mandolin):

we throw our letters in the hall
it’s getting colder in the evenings

sometimes the children like to
push their faces down into the
pillows of the living room and
never take them out
never take them out
never take them
out

today i couldn’t feel my fingers
or hear the sound of standing still

and all the sunlight falls down
pitter pitter pitter
you think i should go away? well
i think that i will
i think that i will
i think that i
will

the pie is old, it could get moldy
the winter’s licking at our toes

so when i go to sleep i will
say a little prayer, because it’s
better to believe a bit than
not at all to care
not at all to care
not at all to
care