February 2016
Spring is here.
Just like every year before this, it arrived before I’d even realized.
When I left for Montana, all the trees and bushes steadfastly assured me that it was still winter and that it would still be winter when I came back.
But it turns out they lied. I guess it was my fault for trying to communicate with plants.
The day I came back to the Bay, I was taken aback by the explosion of color and the sweetness that filled the air. I dislike artificial fragrances, especially faux-flower smells, but I absolutely love the smell of nature.
I try my best to live a simple life.
I rarely buy items beyond the essentials— just groceries and gear— and even then, I buy gear second-hand that's 'good enough.' Other expenditures are to be used only for loved ones.
Buying gifts for people is a struggle, because I hate buying things without practical applications.
Dilemma: Cleaning out my belongings, trimming out the unnecessary, I come across sentimental gifts from friends— stuffed animals, cups decorated with puffy paint, oversized picture frames covered in stickers— what do I do with these? I don’t actually want these items, but someone not only bought these for me but spent time making them look nice— can I really put this in the trash where I'd just tossed the three-week-old takeout?
This is an issue that gives me anxiety.
And so, to save someone else this anxiety, I try hard to buy practical gifts. As a result, I have a habit of giving people Christmas and birthday gifts half a year late— because sometimes it takes me that long to find the right gift. And so— delays, delays, delays.
And yet I love adorable things.
Really, really love.
I love adorable stationary. I love adorable hair ribbons. I love adorable earrings. I used to have to try really hard to prevent myself from buying adorable things because it was getting ridiculous.
I put an absolute ban on buying adorable stationary because when I left Korea, I literally bought some 10 notebooks and therefore now have a sufficient supply for the next few years.
I also became allergic to cheap metals, which put a pretty quick end to my earring-purchasing habits because my love for adorable isn’t greater than my rational frugality.
As for hair ribbons—luckily America hasn’t caught onto the ridiculous ribbon trend that I loved so much in Korea, so that habit is also gone (this didn’t stop some of my friends from buying me a hair ribbon with a stuffed pony attached to it though).
Then all that’s left is flowers.
I’m not the type to buy cut flowers, but I really appreciate flowers in people’s yards. It doesn’t have to have flowers though— I actually really love succulents, and absolutely love the growing popularity of drought-resistant yards.
It’s somehow really comforting, peaceful and even joyful in a way to see plants grow so well with love.
Is that a strange thing to think?
Childhood: I was so proud of our yard.
Sometimes my mother and I would go on walks around the neighborhood. At that time, I remember thinking that we surely had the most beautiful yard in the entire community! My father, a landscaper, perfectly designed the space and carefully selected all the different flowers and plants.
My favorite plant was the tiny strawberry bush.
I remember discovering the little green strawberries and watching over them as the days passed and they slowly turned bright red. It was the most exciting thing in the world, though in reality, it was a process slower than watching paint dry.
Multiple times over.
Yes, surely, out of all the yards in the entire world, ours was by far the most wonderful and most beautiful.
But then, like so many other moments, that moment ended.
We packed up and moved away.
The next few houses we lived in were rented. Since these houses were not ours to keep, my parents never built up the yards. They continued to be nothing more than half-dead grass for years and years, house after house.
Eventually, my parents were able to buy a house.
Today they’ve built up a really beautiful yard. It's is drought-resistant, meaning it’s composed of mostly succulents and other California-native plants.
It doesn’t have that bright vibrancy that so many other yards have, but I think it has its own complexity and beauty as well.
Question: What is a trowel?
Answer: A hand tool used in gardens for digging.
I thought this was common knowledge for most of my life. Obviously, it was a basic tool that every family owned. In your garage, you had a shovel, a screwdriver, a hammer and a trowel, right?
They day I realized most of my friends had no idea what a trowel was nearly flip-turned upside-down my life entire. When I described it, they would, at best, exclaim, “Oh, you mean a hand shovel!”
A hand shovel?
What are you, a barbarian?
What do you call everything else in your life? Do you put your money-case into your item-bag when you get into your gas-carriage so you can go to your workplace—
Okay, that last one didn’t work out so well.
But seriously, a hand shovel?
Please. It’s called a trowel.
Peasant.
Most of these photos are actually from San Diego.
I visited for the first time in my life this month.
I missed seeing such beautiful beaches.
Live uni (sea urchin) from the farmer's market.
Uni has a texture like mushy brains.
Good thing I'm a zombie and I love mushy brains.
Mmmmm mush.
I like to think that if I had a nicer camera, this would've been a super sick shot.
One day.
One day I'll be responsible enough that I won't immediately drop the thousand-plus dollars of delicate equipment from my butterfingertips.
Until then-- budget cameras forever!!!
In some ways, I'm super ambitious.
In other ways, I'm completely ambition-less.
But one thing I've always wanted to do my entire life is to own a cafe.
Bake pastries and desserts. Maybe do light lunch items like sandwiches. Serve coffee and tea.
In my eyes, it seems like a job where all I do is make other people happy.
I know now it's a lot more work than just that.
Even so, sometimes I think-- if both my legs broke in multiple spots and I lost three fingers and could never climb again and was doomed to forever stay out of the mountains until the day I died, I wouldn't mind spending my days working in a cafe.
Yup.
My sister and I tried to visit this stray cat commune in San Diego. Evidently there used to be some 40+ abandoned cats living here. Locals began to take care of the cats, spaying/neutering them, leaving out food, and eventually adopting the adoptable ones.
Now there are only some 15 or so around. They spend their days lazing about. People sometimes set up tents for them during storms.
Isn't that really great?
There was a giant "No Trespassing" sign though which we lawfully abided, despite the fact that the gate wasn't locked at all.
I love colors.
And also OCD.
Which makes me really love graphs and charts.
But hate shitty infographics.
Whenever I see a full moon, I have this passing thought--
This is the same moon that all the people I love are standing under.
Though as I write this now, I realize it's also the same moon that all the people I hate, think are stupid, am ambivalent about, and otherwise dislike are standing under.
So it's a pretty dumb thought actually.
But it's a thought I have fairly often whenever I see a full moon nonetheless.
A last adventure to close out a really great month.
I can't help but to think--
The world is really great.
I used to think of it as, "I'm a really lucky girl."
But I don't like that phrase so much these days.
I know it's not luck because I know better than anyone else the decisions I've made to come here.
But I also know better than anyone else that I have been lucky to meet the people I've met who've helped me along the way.
So now I think, "I'm a really lucky girl, and the world is really great, so I want to try even harder to experience even more great things."
It's a kinda long-winded thought.
Like so many of my other thoughts.
I love the mountains because they are exactly what they are.
There’s never any promise of anything more, and never deliverance of anything less.
It’s quite simple, really.