Irresistible Charm of Little Charly

I remember the night Charly was born. My cousin updated us on hangout with the status of his wife while she was in the hospital. I met my other cousin for dinner and we were waiting anxiously for the good news. It took a while but the moment they sent the picture of wrinkly Charly, we were so overwhelmed with joy. It was the first time we had felt that way since the passing of our uncle which was so sudden and tragic; his wife thought he was fast asleep the night before and it wasn’t until the morning after, she realized he had passed.
I was in my head, in my world when my cousin told us and asked us to go over to his parents’ house. Before the message, I felt inspired and was painting autumn in Japan of last year of which I had remembered very well. My emotions changed immediately; how vulnerable life seems, our parents are really aging, I am at the age where I should know what I want and should be pursuing it, but I am not, is my cousin and his pregnant wife okay? We gathered in the small living room of their cluttered apartment as the cops sat near the front door, waiting, recording. Whispering amongst ourselves, my aunt recalled what happened the night before, that morning, between tears and sniffles. We were there and didn’t know what to talk about except how to take care of the situation formally- the funeral parlor, the burial ground, death note from the doctor, how to arrange this and that.
A day or two after the burial, a week after Charly’s expected due date, Charly was born.
Momentarily we were distracted from grief and life goes on in a weird way. My cousin who was the same age, who grew up with us, became a father.
I think the event was a brief awakening; my overachiever cousin quit her comfortable job to join a start up- she said she was crying nonstop for months because she didn’t know how to cope with the loss, change and risk. I was more eager to finish the interior design courses, opened myself up to a second chance- I was a bit too optimistic at the same time. Life is never where we expect it to go; my cousin struggles with her new job, I felt uncomfortable and sad because life didn’t give me what I had wanted no matter how hard I tried. It wasn’t within our control.
Maybe what we see now is temporary. The impermanence of things will overcome these moments where we feel unwell, hurt, disappointed; it might change to something else, maybe these events are the catalysts for better changes. Just like how Charly grew from a little Buddha to a mischievous child. I am rambling on, what I want to say is I am grateful we have Charly in our lives. We are so lucky to have her. Counting our blessings! She’s irresistible 🙂 ❤

Two perspectives

Today which is Friday of this week my boss let me get off work at 4pm so I can enjoy the brief afternoon of my birthday weekend. I decided to go to the rooftop bar( of which they checked my id to find out I was severely overaged, the guard was disappointed but said happy birthday anyway, although it is tomorrow). After it started to get crowded I proceeded to the most convenient tea shop nearby which was Argo tea.

Balloons flying near the Empire State Building, view from 20 stories high

From ground level

At Argo tea I was told of a nameless doppelgänger who comes at the same time everyday. I was surprised and fascinated and at the same time, I remembered a long time ago when a former coworker had ran after a girl who looked like me and realized it wasn’t me.

Today I was so scared of losing somebody I realized I had taken for granted recently. My mind went from is that person ignoring me to is that person alive. Seems like it’s hard to change the worrywart part of myself. I even went to the restroom at level 20 to cry it out. Luckily that person is safe and sound, and doing better than me.

On Writing…

I have always enjoyed writing. The first story I have shared with my classmates dates back to the last year of middle school; I was probably 12 or so. It was a cheesy story from a boy’s perspective of his love for a dying girl. Very melodramatic.

The first time I was writing because I wanted to was in middle school. Having a pen pal was very popular back then; emailing was not common and not every household had a computer. My classmates and I would write letters to each other every single day, despite the fact that we saw each other in class all the time, we talked on the phone after school and we walked home together-it was a sign of the depth of our friendships. We would wrap the letters in layers of envelopes, gift wrap papers, as though the wrapper was more important than the letter itself. Receiving a letter was like receiving a gift, there were letters decorated with stickers and happy faces. Those were my first memories of writing.

In high school, instead of writing letters, I passed a notebook with my friends (they were not the same friends I had in middle school). We would write about our mundane life, banal things that happened during the day, it seemed like it wasn’t much but the accumulation of the ordinary brought us closer. At one point, I had a silver notebook and started writing stories in it, I would pass it to my friend NS. Sometimes I would make up words and explained as though they were actual words; thinking about it, it was quite embarrassing. NS was always very encouraging and believed in me, in my work; despite the lack of proofreading and bad grammar. Although it wasn’t great writing, I didn’t stop writing; high school was not easy, there was definitely teenage angst and writing was an outlet.

Fast forward to college, NS was going to an art school and was taking a book binding class, she decided she wanted to print the short story I had written about sneakers hanging on the utility pole lines and make it into a book. It is still at the Pratt’s library. I still have a copy at home. I took two creative writing classes; they were very different; one was structured around style, we would read a story and follow the writer’s style. The other one was independent of the reading, we would read writer’s insights on writing and write our own story within a certain length.

After graduating, for a few years, I haven’t written much. Lack of time was an excuse, I haven’t disciplined myself to write. Writing comes in surges, when I am emotional about something, it reads like a letter to my intended audience without addressing or sending it to this audience. I have trouble expressing myself and sometimes I don’t realize the depth of certain feelings until it is too late; my processor is slow, I need time to process. It’s not a matter of filtering the feelings but I have learned early on, reaction and raw emotions can easily cause destruction. You say things you don’t mean, and later on you cannot retract.

Writing allows editing which is a means to revisit those feelings, finding words that are more accurate, discovering greater depth, introspecting and delving into the real meaning of events and occurrences. Editing is not used as a vehicle to hide the truth; instead it is used to reveal it. It is a solidarity act; hearing advice from other people is wonderful, but it is a projection of their lives, beliefs and experiences, when you listen to yourself, you hear your own voice. I am susceptible to the opinions of others; there are a lot of times when I want to avoid conflicts and follow along because I thought the older is wiser, the happy ones know the secrets to happiness and the successful ones know how to live a good life. Writing lets me hear my own voice and clears up my mind from distractions.

When I am sad, I write. It might be pointless rambling, but at the end of the day, it clears up my mind and finds a purpose. It is one thing in life that never fails me. Good writing, bad writing, that is not the point, the point is to write.
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A couple of years ago, I met a friend who had told me she had a miscarriage. She was depressed; her boyfriend’s mother was very supportive and thoughtful and had only good intentions for her. However, she was having a hard time coping, every day she would write in her diary, she wrote for a few months, and eventually she stopped. She said through writing, she was able to endure the pain and slowly get back to her normal self. By the time, I have met her, she was cheerful and full of good energies.

People heal differently, it is important to get in touch of how we feel. Recently, I reacted towards something very emotionally, I thought it had to do with jealousy but when I slowed down, thought and wrote about it, I realized, it had to do with trust and forgiveness. When I had my own space to think, that was when I discover the truth of my reaction. Had I trusted, had I forgave, it would just be an ordinary day. I couldn’t, I was not ready. So our story finished.

Barbarian Sakura- The last essay

We had met at Japan society two years ago; the idea of having a gallery show was conceived a year ago when one of our classmates had to relocate to Seattle. As farewell gifts, we gave her artworks we cherished and she loved them. Yama saw the artworks and was impressed and thought, “Hey! Maybe we could put an artshow together.”

Despite lots of enthusiasm from all the classmates, there were little movements; ideas were thrown around and dropped. After bidding farewell to our beloved classmate to Seattle, another classmate had to move to Florida for his job, then earlier this year, another one graduated and moved back to Chicago, and finally within the last ones standing, Yama had decided to move on as well. It was one of those moments when we realized, the group we had taken for granted for two years would eventually separate and the party would be over. Either we do this now or never.

We agreed the hardest part in pulling an Art show together was finding a space within our means. We definitely can’t afford $500 for an evening of three hours (this sounds ludicrous but if you check Craigslist, NYC real estate is ridiculous). We also had no connection to people who own real estate in NYC. We looked around and finally, in the first week of June, Mae from NY Studio Gallery responded and heard us out. Since the gallery had empty time slots in June, she took our meager offer. We were happy we could secure a place, but the next part was finding classmates to join our show and paying a share of the rent.

Sakura san joined without questioning our plan; she was enthusiastic about it and loves the samurais deeply so she was willing to participate and give without thinking of what would be returned. Kaito san took a bit of convincing since he was a programmer and did not feel he had the talent to be an artist; we were able to explain to him later on, being an artist has a lot to do with having the will to experiment, be curious and most importantly, find meanings in projects you are very interested in. Having talent, whatever that meant, helped a lot, but without perseverance, it didn’t amount to too much.

We visited the space, took photos and started throwing our ideas of how to plan at Cha An, a tea place in the East Village. We thought of our budget and “guessed” many things like how many guests we would have, what we would do, how we would place the artworks, what events we would have in that space. Yama also thought of the name Barbarian Sakura which Matsumori san had coined the previous year during an outing at the Brooklyn Botanical garden; while viewing the cherry blossoms, those of us who had never been to Japan were impressed and thought they were beautiful, but Matsumori who had been to Japan numerous times, noticed they were not real cherry blossoms since they had too many petals. He had called them “Barbarian Sakura.”

At that moment, we realized our ignorance of the Japanese culture despite spending over 2 years to study the language; we felt like we were “gaijins” or foreigners. The name of the show puts it perfectly; this is our barbaric perspective of Japan, through our eyes, this is how we see Japan, be it true or not. We want to share our perspectives with the world whether they are idealized or vandalized. Art is subjective; so are our perspectives.

After we got everybody 120% on board, we started working. It was very painful since we had very little direction. Yama works in finance and has very little time to commit since work takes up 70% of the day, Sakura san is an accountant and she, too, works 15 hours a day, Kaito has classes and is a programmer who works tons of hours, I am (was) taking two classes that take up 3 days out of 7 days on top of a full time job. It was very demanding- we met weekends to plan some more and worked on our artworks. The posters and graphics was another feat; I am a beginner in illustrator and was taking introductory courses on Lynda.com, the first posters I made (which I stayed up late to do), were pretty crappy and the first meeting was full of disappointment as we disagreed about budget, refreshments arrangements, delayed deadlines and bad posters.

Things started taking a turn when I asked friends for help; a friend who worked at a bakery, kindly donated 50 cupcakes, another donated very decadent chocolate, another donated money towards our insurance and another one offered to bartend for the opening. Things started to fall into place; poster designs were better, artworks were coming together, and we started to understand each other better. I am not saying suddenly, one day it became perfect- but I think the main thing was we didn’t give up and Mae from NYSG was very helpful and offered advice from her 5 years of experience of running a gallery. We were so fortunate to meet such good people who believed in us and supported us in various ways. Without the help of our friends and the gallery owner, this show would not have happened.

The show was successful in a way that would only reflect in the eyes of the beholders. To us, it was just a tiny sprout of an idea that blossomed into an artshow; it became a place where people could enjoy themselves without the rigid confines of a typical artshow. It was an artshow where just to have the will to be an artist could make you an artist-whether it was temporary or not didn’t matter. The sharing of the love of the culture was open to all, as long as there was a will to understand. A little bit of curiosity could lead to answers and explorations of the unknown. The experience was amazing; it made us realize it was not easy to run a gallery or have an artshow, the amount of work was underrated(think legally- contracts, insurances, organizing, marketing, etc), it was hard to be an artist but if we really wanted to do what we love, we have to believe in it even if the odds are against us.