dear mom
April 10, 2009
this holy weekend (tonight included) i will not throw a party or go to any parties. i will stay close to home and go to church with you on sunday. maybe i’ll even keep my nice clothes on after mass. i can’t make any promises though because you know i’m all about my sweatpants and my chanclas on the weekends. (yes, i realize this does not help my quest to find a boyfriend, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue.) this weekend, i will behave. i will do this for you and for me and because i love Jesus.
art walk
April 9, 2009
la telenovela
April 8, 2009
tonight marichui, the benevolent protagonist who became blind after she was shot in the head by the evil estefania, tripped and fell down a flight of stairs with her baby, juanito. my mom, my aunt and my grandma were on pins and needles:
grandma: why did she have to fall down the stairs? the baby’s gonna die! and marichui is going to go crazy when she finds out.
aunt: no, marichui is going to fall into a comma, and the baby’s gonna live, but a bad guy is going to find it and sell it.
mom: poor marichui! this is exactly what estefania wanted!
now and then
April 7, 2009
i like to drive to the mission inn hotel at sundown and pretend i live there. i march past the valet, through the 133-year-old adobe archway and arrive at the entrance to greet the doormen. the double doors swing open and i ride the antique elevator up to the third floor. i stroll past the guest rooms, the stained glass image of Jesus Christ and down the tiled tunnel into the spanish-style courtyard. then i look around — at the bougainvillea vines, the wrought iron fences, the mission tiled roofs, the ornate pillars and cathedral steeples — and i think, mine, all mine.
up above
April 6, 2009
chasing sundown on the santa barbara coast.
a good friend said to me
April 5, 2009
the other day, ”you are so blessed, God would have to teach you how to fly to beat how blessed you already are.”
today amid the friends, the music, the hotdogs, the kite flying, the water guns, the sangria and the s’mos (not s’mores because i forgot the graham crackers) i knew what he meant. i am rich, rockefeller rich, with blessings.
the weather at the beach, it was california perfect. the sunset, straight out of a movie scene. better than i ever imagined during all those times in portland when i daydreamed of coming home to a birthday like this.
here’s to the list, and scratching off # 9
the guy is happy
April 4, 2009
you talk to him and you can almost see his eyes break into cartwheels. i haven’t seen john smile this much since we used to work at disneyland, where we got paid to be happy. his wife’s name, befittingly, is joy. and she is every bit the kind and super human being i always imagined john marrying. congrats mr and mrs chiembanchong!
the woman with peach lips
April 2, 2009
and inky black hair eases into the chair in front of me and begins to talk about all the times she’s been turned away. her scripts, her movie ideas, her art. over and over the answer was no. still, she kept pushing. she keeps pushing. when she talks about her work, her hands flail about like a ringmaster — passion on the loose, a riot on the way.
i sat there in awe. i could hear her matches igniting. her life’s matches, the kind laura esquivel talked about in like water for chocolate. the kind every person is given when they’re born. one by one, esquivel wrote, they are lit by “a melody, a word, a caress, a sound.”
“if there’s nothing to trigger the explosion, our box of matches becomes damp and then we’ll never be able to light any of them.”
i drove away thinking about the costco-sized box God assigned me. about all the happily charred pieces and those that might have gone soggy in my first 28 years of life. then i thought of the dry, intact ones, still waiting to be set off.
today i turn 29. even if i burn every last one of my fingers, i plan to light as many of those little sticks as i can in this last year of my 20s.
my favorite fool
April 1, 2009
emely bear, hula dancing in the front yard.
