metal spike, meet my eye

am I the only one who has noticed the walls are closing in?

- desperately looking for long enough metal spike to sufficiently pierce my eye socket and end things here and now….

I’m even funny when I sleep

Tonight’s dinner conversation:

Brian: Hey, do you remember grabbing my ass while you were asleep last night?

Me: (uncontrollable laughter)

Apparently at two different times during the night, Brian woke up to me fondling his butt. He thought I was messing with him until he heard my signature “I’m deep asleep” teeth-grinding in his ear. He said looking back on it now, it was quite cute, but at the time, he was simply perplexed and grumpy about my ill-timed advances depriving him of rest.

Hey, who wouldn’t want to wake up next to me?
If only you were so lucky.
If only I remembered what I was dreaming about.

it’s confirmed

I am old. The other morning, I found a silver hair. Depite the fact that is was actually quite pretty, like a delicately shimmering pronouncement of inevitable death, it was a shock to my system.

I ran downstairs to show Brian, and he just pointed to his own head and told me at least I have hair.

I guess he’s right.

Damn.

someday I’ll get mines on the lightrail

I don’t know if this incident last night is indicative of me needing to leave my current work place or of me needing to stay where I’m comfortable and can continue to yell at fucking obnoxious teenagers….

Coming home from campus last night on the LightRail, I get stuck on a railcar with this group of kids who end up trashing everything - throwing their shit around, yelling, jumping all over the place, and then tearing up the RTD schedules and flinging them everywhere. I watch other people nearby try not to notice or make eye contact. I can’t help but.

So finally I can’t take it any longer. I deal with similar bullshit where I teach and I can’t flip the “I gotta do something” switch off even after the the work day ends.

I raise my voice and ask, “Could you just *stop* doing that?”

One of the most offensive girls stands up to posture. “Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do? Who do you think you’re talking to?”

I maintain eye contact because I’m a fucking urban public school teacher and we’re a haggard and irritable lot. “I’m talking to you.”

She and her friends then start doing whatever trite things that adolescents do when they’re called out on their utterly insufferable behavior. They’re ready to fight…except a couple of this girl’s guy buddies. As we get to the end of the line, one of her friends looks at me before he exits and shakes his head in embarrassment. Then another one whispers to me to wait a bit before getting off. He ushers the group quickly away and I appreciate the gesture.

As much as I fantasize about smacking my students every once in a while, I don’t think I actually need to get into a fight with some seventeen year old who’ll cut me without ever batting an overly-mascaraed eye.

nice try, “government”

My cell phone reads “unavailable number.” I answer, already suspicious.
The conversation goes like this….

me: Hello?
government: Yes, hello. This is the government.
me: Oh.
government: We need to speak to the owner of the phone number ***-***-*** Is that you?
me: Um, yeah.
government: We are sending you a grant check.
me: Really? Why?
government: We are sending you the grant money.
me: The grant money? Why?
government: We need to confirm your address so we can send you the grant money.
me: The grant for what?
government: You have not declared bankruptcy and you are a good citizen.
me: Right, of course.
government: I have you listed at the address ************ Is this correct?
me: No. The government doesn’t know my address?
government: We need your correct address.
me: If you’re the government, you can find me.
government: We are sending you the grant money.
me: What’s my name?
government: CLICK.

Ah, the government, making my night just a little more entertaining.

how do you live when life gets in the way….

How to start? I’ve been on the phone all day while running around town trying to settle family matters. My grandmother on my dad’s side is quickly passing away and so my dad has to fly out to Seoul on a minute’s notice. What this means for me is: calling every airline/checking every website for a decent price (is $1,250 really a decent price?), contacting various family members for countless updates and arrangements, racing to Kinko’s to fax over whatever necessary documents to the right people under the right time constraints, making sure I have enough funds to cover the expenses, and deciding that going to sleep only to wake up at 2:30 in the morning to take my dad to the airport isn’t worth the trouble of going to bed and being teased with fitful and abbreviated rest.

Despite my constant cursing, I am grateful that I am able to help out my parents. Well, it shouldn’t even be considered helping out; it’s more just being a part of a family and giving back.

I guess that’s what baffles me about other families’ dynamics. I’m the youngest, so I’ve been shielded from most of our family’s various struggles, but still, I will never escape the fact that my parents and brother had to give up innumerous things both significantly crushing and subtly crushing to get us to a place of relative stability. So it comes as second nature to think of matters, especially money matters, in terms of the family instead of the individual, in terms of the parents not being the only supporters but the kids being active participants as well now that we’re adults. That’s why I’m incredulous (and indignant…I’m really good at being indignant) when I come across those strange, magically well-off people who still accept money from their parents or some other well-meaning but enabling benefactor without ever having to give back, let alone ever having to even contemplate giving back.

Yes, I’m a total classist. I’m repulsed by rich people. Scratch that. I only think that when I’m particularly bitter. I’m repulsed by the complete blind eye *some* of them turn to the realities of the rest of us. We can’t buy houses, start business ventures, take grand vacations, whatever, on the generosity of our parents and then try to pass it off as our own doing. We can’t continue to live the “starving artist/ghetto hipster” dream knowing that once we’re ready to take on some crumb of responsibility, we’ve got those privileged connections to help us ease into wealth again after a short spell of faux rebellion against the very establishment that made the “I’m so cool, I have no money” life possible. And we can’t deny that what we are lucky enough to have is the result of the concerted and combined efforts of those who have struggled with us.

But honestly, I can’t say I’m poor. Shit, I can’t say that I’m lacking in anything. Here I am, sitting in a house I fucking own, on a laptop that was a fucking birthday present, so I really have no room to stand on the working class soap box. But I do know how it is to be scared straight, knowing I have no room to dick around because no one is going to be there to finance my dilettante endeavors or pay the cost of me taking my sweet time to “find myself.” I do know how it is to make ends meet with what I have, and I also know how it is to help my family make ends meet with what we have collectively. And I know how to acknowledge whatever aid, insider tips, connections that have helped me along the way.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great that people are rich. I just want them to acknowledge the fact that things are made much easier for them because of all those resources at their fingertips. And by all means, they should USE those resources! They shouldn’t deny their privilege to pretend working class chic! I just want the rich to understand that the rest of us do not have that luxury, and it’s probably been a much more difficult journey for us because of that fact.

Where was I going with this spectacular venting of steam?

My grandma is dying.

And I get bitter and angry when I am worried and sad.

I don’t really know her at all. An ocean has separated us for most of our relationship, and the past couple of decades her hearing loss and memory loss have made communication nearly impossible so that even when I do have the chance to talk to her, the shameful frustration that overtakes me makes me too tired and depressed to pursue knowing her any further. The same could be said of my dad, feeling torn between surviving in a completely different culture with his wife and kids and keeping his traditional familial duty as a Korean son taking care of his elderly mother despite restrictive immigration laws. I just think of all the time we never really had, even when we were together, to actually know each other. I think of how long my grandma has lived (she’s turning 100 years old this month), what she’s seen and experienced, never to communicate them to anyone but herself once her physical and mental impairments set in.

I’m mourning for a woman who is not dead yet, for a woman I never really knew. And I guess that’s where the pain comes from, knowing that the opportunity to actually love my grandma for who she is, is gone, was never really within my reach once we left Korea over 25 years ago.

So kiss your grandmas for me. I’ll be kissing my dad as I send him off tomorrow at 4 am, hoping to God that he gets there in time to kiss his mom goodbye.