Hello,

For the last 9 months, I have been living in Cheonan, South Korea.

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3 Things I've Never Regretted

 Here are 3 things that I've never had regrets about....

1.) Keeping a Cookbook of Trusted Recipes

      About seven years ago, I started keeping a spiral notebook full of recipes that I had tried and found successful. Many of these were my mom's recipes that she told me over the phone while I quickly scribbled them down. But the first recipe in the book is a banana bread recipe that I only learned how to bake so that I could subsequently teach a boy I liked how to bake it. You know, that recipe bought me a ton of hours with aforementioned boy and it also turned into a favorite treat I would make for friends of mine when they came to my place. So, that’s a win-win situation folks and I know I wouldn’t still have the recipe, or the memory, if I had not written it down.

            What I love about my spiral notebook is that it’s got enough room in it for notes, and add-on notes, and any asides that I feel like including; or that my vegan-obsessed roommates decide to pen-in for me (thanks, Whitney). The above is my mom's peanut butter cookie. These are rich, buttery cookies which she's always made with JIFF, but you can use whatever pb you like,if you choose to try out the recipe.  

          In addition to being an invaluable resource, this spiral notebook keeps my macbook safe. It’s no secret that I’m messy in the kitchen (my co-worker recently informed me that that’s because I’m a Cancer; when he said it, he sort of tilted his head and gave me a knowing look and I started furiously wiping down the espresso machine). Anyways, the notebook also gives me a certain peace of mind because it helps me to avoid bringing electronics into the same area as raw eggs and oil and it keeps my messy fingers from messing up my keyboard. 

2.) Staying with Starbucks for So Long

          I worked for Starbucks for almost five years. Maybe you have a horror story about this company, I know I could turn mine into a horror story if I wanted to but looking back, I think it was a good experience. It was the first coffee job I ever had and though at times I hated it, my time there is something I’ve never regretted.

            Starbucks taught me to treat others with respect and dignity. I know I might sound like a clone to some people, but some of the most extensive training that the managers and supervisors at Starbucks get is not in coffee (obviously) but in interpersonal communication and people management. Bosses there know how to motivate their baristas to get shit done, and they know how to make people feel valued and not taken advantage of. That’s probably one of the greatest keys to their success as a company, the fact that they genuinely seem to respect their partners. It's not the caramel macchiato or chonga bagel that has made Starbucks the company that it is, it’s the fact that baristas at Starbucks are really well taken care of. For nearly five years, my Starbucks schedule rarely interfered with my school schedule. I didn't realize how important or unusal that was until I got jobs at other places that didn't give a damn about the fact that I was a student. When I left Starbucks, I was surprised to find out just how much I had been spoiled. Most of the people I have worked under since Starbucks have not had the extensive people-managment training that's necessary for, you know, managing people. I didn't realize how much I would miss being treated like a human, and not a dispensable plebeian  But hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?

            That being said, I’d like to say that the other huge thing Starbucks taught me was how to work really freaking hard. After leaving the company, I would meet ex-partners in different work situations everywhere I went and the one conversation I would have over and over is how you can tell when somebody used to work for Starbucks. Why? Because they work really freaking hard. Ex-partners are always some of my favorite people to work with because there’s a certain work-ethic that’s been pounded into them. 

            I’m glad I stayed with Starbucks for as long as I did. It was a really key experience in developing me into the person I am today and I've never had any regrets about my time there. 

3.) Being Brave Enough to Go Alone

       In life, there will always be things that you want to do that nobody else really cares to do with you. I learned this lesson early because I was the only kid in my family who was truly dedicated to building snowmen in the 2 inches of snow we would sometimes get in December. What I learned was that if I wasn’t okay with doing it alone, then maybe I would miss the chance to do it at all, and if I had to pick one from the two options, going at it alone was always the better choice. Trips to the beach, shows in Seattle, poetry readings and slams, prayer meetings, long train trips, new coffeehouses, grungy-looking Thai places, you name it and chances are, at some point, I’ve done it alone.

            About a year ago, I had a guy come into my coffeehouse and he was really bummed out. There was a concert going on that night with his favorite band and he really wanted to go to, but none of his friends would go with him. When I suggested that he go alone, he bulked at the idea and sort of looked at me like I was out of my mind. I'm always surprised at how many people I meet that share this guy's mindset. After he walked away all I could think about was all the places that I so desperately wanted someone with me, but because nobody was available, I elected to have the adventure by myself and once I was off and going, I never regretted doing it. Being alone isn't always ideal, but sometimes it's healthy and allows you to experience the situation in a way that you would not have been able to if you had had company. And almost always it's better than not seeing something/experiencing something that you really needed/wanted to see. I love my friends, but what makes them so wonderful is that fact that we're all different and that means that sometimes they don't want to go where I'm going, but if I let that stop me from going then I would be limiting my own life, and that wouldn't be good. I'm glad I've been brave enough to go at it alone. 

Three of the Best Gifts

This is the first post in a noncommittal series of short-list-like posts I'd like to make.

This is a list of three of the best gifts that I've ever been given. It's not a comprehensive list and it's in no particular order, this is just three of my favourite things that I've ever been given.

1.) One Thousand Paper Cranes

In November 2011, I made a joke to Jessie Fast that she should sent me 1,000 paper cranes, and for Christmas, she did. This isn't all of them, a great deal of them are presently hanging from my ceiling. I remember being absolutely stunned when I opened the box. I've never been so shocked or so surprised and awed by a gift.

2.) Letters, Notes, & Cards; basically anything with Words

I love words... always have. I sort of live off words of affirmation and I can remember things people have said to me about me for years and years and years. I'd rather get a crumpled up napkin with words from a loved one on it than a set of lotion from The Body Shop any day. This is a little wicker box that I bought some years ago, it's stuffed full cards and letters and notes. The top card is a Christmas card from Robyn Nelson. I know, it looks like a birthday card but that's only because Robyn chose the BEST card out there to include in my Secret Santa present for our roommate exchange in 2008.

3.) Handmade Photo Album

The year I turned 22 was my Golden Birthday. That year, Ai Melody and I went on an adventure around Seattle that ended with my first (and so far, only) ever Korean BBQ experience (be careful the seeds you sow, people). Anyways, after dinner, she took me to one of her favourite secret places on Lake Washington and she gave me THIS, a photo album that she made from hand and filled with pictures from our various adventures. To this day, it's one of my favrourite things for all the love and time that she put into it. 

Saturday Mail

It's no secret that I live in a small town and small town life is known for having it's little quirks. I would be convinced that the workers at my local Post Office collect all of my mail and wait to give it to me until Saturday if I didn't recognize the fact that that would take considerable effort and organization on their part- a feat I'm not sure they're capable of.

Anyways, here is my Saturday Mail from the last two weeks!

Last week, I recieved a package from Michelle containing socks and fun Korea stuff, and also my new passport came from the passport people! 

And this week....

Order of a dress and a sweater from ASOS, tickets to see Dylan Moran, just the usual random correspondence from the FBI, and also my transcripts from my alma mater. The fact that the transcripts arrived on Saturday really is a minor miracle considering I turned in the paperwork on Thursday, the office workers at my school are not usually so prompt! 

This should go without saying but I really <3 getting stuff in the mail! 

Excerpts from 19th Century Travel Writing

The following are excerpts from Quaint Korea, a travel book written in 1895 by a woman named Louise Jordan Miln. 

A Poetry Reading (formerly titled "thoughts on Art")

I expect you to read the following with the assumption that you're presently living in Seattle, and perhaps you're interested in art, or Art, as they say. Of course, you don't actually have to be living in Seattle presently to do this. Perhaps you live thirty miles north east of Seattle, or perhaps you once lived there, but you don't any longer. Or maybe you hate Seattle. Or maybe you hate art, or Art. But in any case, as a reader, I know for certain that you're capable of that wonderful thing we know as the suspension of disbelief and to aid you in the process, to add a little verisimilitude to your experience, I'm going to blow some sparkly dust on you that I found just laying about these here interwebs. Don't worry, it's all going to help guide you in the experience. Ready? One. Two. Three.....

.......................................................

Now, you find yourself on the corner of E Pine Street and Melrose Avenue, walking straight towards a dilapidated brick apartment building standing sentinel at the end of Melrose Avenue. The night sky is clear and it’s unseasonably warm for spring. You smile and nudge your companion, an old friend, a new friend, at this point, these titles don’t matter. When the two of you arrive at the building’s wide oak doors, you realize that the building is, indeed, threatening to tumble over at any moment. Earlier in the week, you had read a newspaper article about a poetry reading inside an art gallery and the directions you wrote down for yourself lead you here, to this place. But is there really an art gallery inside the apartment building? Is it on the lower floor? You can’t tell.The doors are covered in yellow construction tape and Do Not Enter signs. And there’s no way in, but then a man in a sweater vest and a bowtie at the corner of the building beckons you over with a wave of his hand, he’s practically standing in the alley.

        Are you looking for Vignettes? he asks. You turn and look over at your friend. You both nod, yes.

        Well, he says, the door is broken. I don’t know what kind of door gets broken but this one is. Go in and around and if you run into the landlord, just tell him you’re going to a party. I’m Graham, he says. And you both shake his hand and walk in through the back door.

The skeleton of a Murphy bed stands bolted to the peeling wallpaper in the green carpeted hallway. It smells like vintage cigarette smoke. Or cat piss. Or both, mingling in the air right above the over-polished hardwood banisters. On the fourth floor, you both step out of the elevator confused. Only one door has a doorbell and there’s the sound of a loud party coming from the other side. But there’s no sign, and you’re only on the fourth floor in the first place because of some vague inkling you had had. Neither of you had listened to Graham’s instructions. The back of your neck is hot.

        Is this the poetry reading? You exchange a look with your friend, you put your hand on the door knob and then pull away. She’s not committed to just walking in on something that could be something other than what you signed up for, you can see THAT it in her eyes. So this is the girl who went to school in LA and lived in the “ghetto”? you think to yourself. Just then, as they say, the elevator doors open and five frolicking hipsters tumble out and beeline towards the door knob out of which comes all the laughter.

        Hey, your friend addresses one of the guys, Are you guys just partying or is there a poetry reading going on in there? she asks.

        He shoots her a dirty look.

        We don’t differentiate between the two, he says. And you think you would have said the same thing, maybe, if you were in his position.

        You slide in between endless flannel sleeves and vintage lace and polka-dot dresses and bare arms linked to young hands holding cans of Pabst Ribbon Blue and Rainier beer. Everyone knows each other.  They’re laughing and huddled together and although this is an apartment, it’s also, for tonight at least, an art gallery. And it isn’t just an art gallery filled with work made with some bored/retired Microsoft workers who have taken up watercolor to fill up their time. No, this is an art gallery belonging to the young, the working class. This is a gallery belonging to your generation of artists. You find yourself looking for Gertrude Stein. Obviously, this is the one night of the year when the salon is open to accepting new members, and you had no idea. You thought it was just a poetry reading.

I’m dressed all wrong, your friend whispers to you. Why didn’t you mention the dress code? she asks.

I had no idea there was one, you say. But you’re glad that you’re wearing flannel all the same, though you wish you could inconspicuously tear a hole in your shirt.

You find a back wall. You find a place for yourself and your friend on that wall. You exchange glances, and, in a few moments, it begins.

A thin, spectacled man begins to weave his way through the crowd to a corner and it doesn’t take long since the apartment is tiny and now, he’s not seven feet from where you’re standing. He motions for everyone, except for those on the wall, to sit down where they are on the hardwood floors. Everyone sort-of lowers themselves, grappling for a spot and you realize, you’re stuck because there’s no more space on the hardwood, you’re surrounded by bodies and tight, origami-folded legs. You can’t shuffle your feet anymore, you simply have to stay planted, standing, awkwardly propping yourself up with the wall.

As carefully as a gawky baby heron in a swamp, a woman picks and steps her way through the throng to the corner by the window, which has been designated as the front of the room. You realize who she is, she’s the poet, the poet that you’ve all come to see. She’s all clavicles and thin fabric and unkempt flowing hair. When she speaks, her voice is rough, like a science nerd who has finally gotten the nerve to talk. She stands small above her tiny, paper crane congregation and you notice now that many of those on the floor are cradling thrift-store tea mugs filled with a dark red elixir.

You wish you had a tea mug filled with dark red elixir, too. But instead, you listen to the girl.

The poet is now explaining that seven different artists were asked to respond to six of her poems by creating artwork of their own. A few sketches have been scotch-taped to the wall, they're all in pencil or pen, torn out of spiral notebooks, maybe. There’s another, a mixed media piece that includes a boarding pass and a manila envelope, folded into a triangle and glued to blue construction paper. Somebody painted a handsaw white and hung it on the wall. Then there’s a piece that stands about four-feet high, it’s three hot pink tubes that have been duct taped together into something resembling a half-ass version of the Space Needle. Next to it is a similar piece that resembles a giant boa made out of link sausages. They’re supposed to go together. You have no idea how.

Her poems are all very self-referential. And ironic.

Some of the poems are stories, but they point to nothing. You imagine that this is the sort of poetry a young child might write. If they were on acid.

You listen more. The audience is rapt. They laugh at her self-conscious jokes, but you know, and they know, and she knows, that she isn’t self-conscious at all. This is all very serious, after all. This is art. And you’re all standing in the apartment belonging to Seattle’s own Gertrude Stein, a young woman, a curator, as they say, which magazines have called one of the 50 most influential people in Seattle. You can see her now, actually, standing behind some French doors, cradling her cat, and watching the poet as a room full of her closest friends and strangers are drinking wine from her tea mugs. Her bed has been lost under a mountain of satchels, purses, and camera bags. Meanwhile, you’re trying to figure out if the echolalia in the poet’s poems is pointing to something larger, or if it’s just there for the cadence of the poem, which reads like a radio broadcast where half the verbs are covered by static. You decide that you can’t decide.

And you also can’t help but wonder what would happen if you showed up to your own Writer’s Workshop with poems like this. The thought is enough to make you smirk, that is, if you didn’t find the incomprehensibility of it all so terribly maddening.

Now, she’s reading a poem called “Acorn Duly Crushed,”

        Dear stupid forest.

Dear patently retarded forest.

Dear beautiful ugly stupid forest

full of nightingales

why won’t you shut up.

What do you want from me.

A train is too expensive.

A clerk will fall asleep.

Dear bitchy stupendous forest.

Trade seats with me.

The poet goes on, but you’re not listening anymore. Instead, you’re noticing that all the tattoo-covered bare-arms read like a sticker book from some long-forgotten childhood, when you used to keep sticker books, though of course, you never did because the commitment was too much to handle. After all, once you stick a sticker, it’s there forever, permanent. But here you are, surrounded by kids who never faced such life-altering dilemmas. And they have covered themselves with the adult-version of stickers: tattoos, cheap, ubiquitous, trendy. A blue-eyed kitten HERE: lopsided on the back of an elbow, a Band-Aid HERE: on the inside of a wrist, an envelope HERE: on the outside of a wrist, a cupcake HERE: on the crown of a shoulder, an Otter Pop HERE: on somebody’s left calf, and too many anchors to count. Small, portable pieces of artwork, counterfeits of the originals, some which were only meant as advertising ploys, literally etched onto the bodies of their hosts, and for what reason? #YOLO

After twenty-five minutes, the poetry reading ends.

Outside, the amber light from a street lamp pours through cherry blossoms, and you look up into a cloud of now sepia-toned sakura. You walk with your friend to a nearby coffee house, order an Americano, and retire to a secluded booth.  

Can we talk about this? she laughs quietly. You notice that she’s holding an Italian soda, you wince, just a little.

Who was that girl? you ask.

She teaches at Sarah Lawrence. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, your friend says. I looked it up, she says.

But, you hear yourself begin to stammer, But it was terrible, wasn’t it? Those poems, those poems were not really good, you say.

Of course they weren’t good! your friend laughs. But that’s the style. It’s like, this new sort of impressionism in poetry. The idea is to be ironic, she says, or something like that, she says.

You look at your friend, your friend who, this year, has been rejected from twenty-seven different Creative Writing programs across the country and abroad. Your friend who's a lesbian and who's was a Gender Studies major and she's supposed to know things.

I’m tired of shit passing as art, you say. I really am. I mean, what was that? you ask.

That? she repeats the word softly, like a mother to a toddler, or a teacher to a student. That was a poetry reading, she says.

These pictures are not mine, they belong to this website.

The Skills I Do, and Do Not Have: A Post About Quilting

Quilting is a discipline that takes lots of exact measuring, mathematical skills and planning ahead, right down to the minutest detail. It’s safe to say that at these three things, I’m pretty much inept. However, I’ve thankfully been endowed with an excessive amount of stubbornness and that is what I used the last few weeks to make my very own memory (my mother’s term) quilt.

Now, this dream, like most dreams, has been a long time in the realizing. I’m quite certain that I was 19 years old when I first started stuffing my old Jansport backpack with squares of t-shirts and old skirts that I wanted to someday make into a quilt. This should come as no surprise to you, but I’m actually a terribly nostalgic person (*cough* generation...). I’ve been nostalgic since before I ever had anything to be nostalgic about. When I first started thinking about making a quilt, I was at the time planning on going to a university in Virginia (thank God I didn’t do that or none of you would be reading this blog) and I knew that I couldn’t take everything and everyone with me, so the idea for a quilt kind of just sprang up in my mind.  I suppose I thought that it would make me feel better about being hundreds of miles away from the people I love. As a side-note, I’ve always been a little bit weird about the blankets I sleep under, meaning, I’ve always slept under the same kitten-covered white blanket (with a down comforter for added warmth) that I’ve had since I was very, very small. The blanket originally belonged to the ex-wife of one of my older brothers. I have no idea how it came to be in my possession, but the kittens were all given names when I was quite young, and once you name a kitten, it becomes hard to part with it, even if it is just a pattern on a blanket. Buying a patterned or nice comforter from the store has always seemed a bit weird to me, it would be like sleeping under a stranger. Not literally. But, you know.

Anyways, the idea for a quilt was born. And, once an idea is born inside of me, I generally have a very hard time shaking it off. So, the Jansport backpack has traveled with me from house to house, bedroom to bedroom, a dream literally in patches locked away in a dark closet, waiting for me to get around to feeling like I finally had time to deal with it. The thing is, I’ve always had better things to do. Books to read, Japanese to study, long ago, it was Bible studies to lead and this and that. So, the quilt waited until I finally had my JET interview a few weeks ago and realized, I have absolutely nothing left to do but wait until I get the results (which, by the way, won’t be until the end of March at the earliest. So please, stop asking).

So, recently, I brought out all the patches to my quilt, and I got out my mom’s sewing machine and set it up in the dinning room, and I started working on my quilt. The first thing I realized was that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, so I did what I do best, and I used Google. However, the quilting websites I found all used Quiltenese, which I found to be more inscrutable than Japanese and more insular than Christianese. I quickly deduced how long it would take before I understood the quilting websites, closed that tab, and went back to surfing facebook for another twenty minutes before I could face the dinning room again and the 156, 6x6” square patches that awaited me there, strewn about the floor.

Now, I’m going to spare you the details of my quilting methods for two reasons. 1.) if you actually do want to learn how to quilt, you probably don’t want to learn from me, and 2.) when I explained my method to my mother, she literally laughed so hard she turned purple. It was like we’d been watching American’s Funniest Home videos, except, we hadn’t. It was just me, me and my imperfect quilt.

Needless to say, I got it done. And I’m pleased. Halfway through the process, I knew that it was never going to be perfect and to be honest, the thought was really depressing to me. But then I remembered that the whole purpose of a quilt is to keep one warm, and if that’s that, than that could be accomplished even if I was just laying under a pile of scrap fabric. And then I thought of baby Jesus who was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and I shrugged off all my fear and just got to sewing. I know, you think I’m kidding, but quilting is hard work and I was using whatever desperate thoughts I could think of to keep myself going. If Jesus was fine with being wrapped in swaddling clothes, then I’d be fine if I ended up with a tangled mess of a pile of mismatched fabric patches.

Here’s the finished product:  

Since this is a quilt that's made from my own clothes, and since most of the clothes are somewhat important to me, I figured I'd include a colour key.

Colour key:

Peach/Pink Squares with Navy Lettering: These are from an Angkor Wat shirt that I bought at a market in Phnom Penh. I went to Cambodia in February 2006 on a mission trip with my church. I left for Cambodia less than a month after my sister had passed away, so a lot of my memoires of Cambodia are sort of a blur, but I do remember the markets. I didn't actually get to go to Angkor Wat while I was in Cambodia, which is one of the main reasons why I'd like to go back.

Bright Red Squares: These are from this ridiculous shirt I used to wear that had a seal on it and it said in white letters, Sleepy in Seattle. The entire thing is rather embarrassing but I did preach my second sermon while wearing this t-shirt in front of about 500 University of Washington students. I think I would have better fashion sense now, but what can I say? I was 20, people do stupid things when they're 20.... 

Light Green Squares: When I went to the Ukraine in 2005, we were told to pack a lot of skirts because it's a rather conservative culture. We were also told to pack light. I went to Ukraine, Poland and Hungary with one backpack filled with skirts and shirts and other lightweight clothes. This was super helpful, since I then had two hands free to help other people on the trip who had not managed to pack so lightly. Anyways, the light green squares are from a skirt that I wore a lot while I was in Ukraine.

Bright Yellow Batman squares: I have a picture of me somewhere holding a puppy that's licking my face, in the picture, I'm wearing this bright yellow batman shirt which I love, love, loved at the time. Somewhere around 2005. 

Green Squares: I worked for Starbucks for almost 5 years and I worked an average of about 30 hours a week for most of that time while I was an intern, while I went to Bellevue College, and for my first year at Northwest University. People can say what they want, and I know Starbucks isn't considered the best coffee in Seattle, but it was an excellent company to work for and I spent a good portion of my life during those years wearing that green apron.

Purple Squares: Just another t-shirt that I wore often for a period of time. Wore that one a lot in Ukraine.

Virginia is for Lovers: I used to wear this shirt often. It was sort of a reminder to myself that I was supposed to go to Virginia for school. What can I say? People make mistakes. Maybe I'll go to grad school in Virginia... 

Word Search Squares: I really did have a t-shirt that was one big word search with all sorts of animals hidden in it. It had the phrase "sex panther" on it numerous times, and I have a distinct memory of my friends at the time constantly searching for that phrase in particular.

I'm Endangered! Light Yellow Squares: This was, I think, my first ever graphic shirt. It had an owl flying away and said "I'm Endangered!" and I loved, loved this shirt.

Orange Squares: From an old orange sweatshirt which I really thought twice about before cutting up to make it into patches for the quilt. However, I needed it for the colour scheme and really, I've only been sleeping in that sweatshirt for years now, so it seemed like it was time for it to go.

Purple Shirt, Orphanage in Ukraine, 2005

Batman Shirt, and a puppy, 2005

Scooby-Doo Shirt, Cambodia, 2006 (that's a tiny bird in my hand)

Angkor Wat shirt, yes, that's a fried tarantula, no, I did not eat it. Cambodia, 2006

I'm Endangered! Shirt, Cambodia, 2006

Word Search shirt, with old roomie, Robyn. December 2010