The Family

Spent the bulk of a lazy Saturday afternoon hanging out with my nukyuler family.  It’s been a lawng time since we’ve all been together and it was dandy.   I count my blessings and thank the Good Lord.  Through thick and thin, you’ve always got family.  A charming bunch, I’ll admit.

<wink>

Sam’s just about done with dental school.  He’s a Goodfella ‘cept he numbed my face frozen with too many shots.  It ain’t over yet, foo.

Here’s the newest addition to the Kim family (hereby named, Sampson).  That’s my Pop, full of wisdom, much love, and good kimchee soup recipes.  Godfather of the Kimleone Family (we’ll be completely legit in four years).

Yo.  Me and my brotha.  He beat me in HORSE, Around-the-World and 21..  (whisper: I let him win).  The first picture we’ve taken together in years.  Just get married and let me play mindgames with your kids.  hehe.

Three of the Kim gangstas.  Mom wasn’t fond of the extreme close-up though.

And here’s my loyal bud.  Out for the count.  Didn’t have the heart to wake her.

——–

Saw Better Luck Tomorrow with an old friend (almost long and lost).  Dang.  The movie… that’s my old high school.  Massive cheating rings, spoiled lil’ Asian kids and all (ad nauseum).  A bit dark but definitely worth watching.  Hear about Roger Ebert’s crazy speech?  Model minority, my butt.  If you tickle us, do we not laugh; if you prick us, do we not bleed… that stuff.  <smile>   Smartly made, it’s a good film that’ll make people think.

As it is, I’m down for the count too.  Hey, it’s Monday. 

—–

Currently listening to:

Jeff Buckley – Grace

Hallelujah (track 6) is somethin’ else, man.  Plaintive, bittersweet music.

But love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

It’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

—

All things by the grace of God.  <hearty amen>  Here’s to a good week.

Matt11:28

cho has his day

 

Per his Thursday custom, Mr. Cho sits on a weathered green park bench adjacent the jungle gym.  It’s the kids he thinks of daily, giggling and fighting and making up all at once as they kick their legs high in the sky.  The spiral slide is always a hit.  An assembly line of tots climbing upwards in an orderly fashion, spin-spinning down and around and around, landing in soft clay-brown sand.  It’s an industrial sized playground, plopped a couple hundred yards square in suburbia’s parkland.  Chinese elms arch overhead in clumped trios and the sound of a passing breeze carries the rusty squeak of two swings, undulating like pistons.

 

He’s crotchety and ill-tempered, short with the stupid.  But children are a different matter.  A visit from his grandchildren leaves his neighbors befuddled; his whiny complaints and acerbic wit replaced by cartoon voices and hearty, slightly exaggerated laughter.  Oh really!  I don’t believe you!  Ha!  You’ve caught me, Pink Power Ranger!  A polished oak cane leading the way, a stooped, stubble-faced man scampers about a middle-class lawn, braided pigtails in pursuit.

 

His wife was a catch.  Short and a little stocky but such fire and light in her eyes!  In their youth, they fancied themselves an enlightened, modern couple, cracking Kierkegaard jokes in private; funny precisely because the jokes aren’t funny.  It was self-effacing.  Over morning coffee, they talked of all things under the sun, nothing sacred.  Stubborn as heck, all their head butting was always with subtexts of levity.  They weren’t actually so serious.  Just in love, skinny-dipping in the swirling banter.  He was happiest during their habit-forming years when they’d go for walks, no more conversation than hands and their crystallized breath.

 

When tired, he helped her with the New York Times crossword puzzles.  Slowly, the myelin sheaths of her fragile neurons unraveled and as her hands shook, he pretended not to see.  Nineteen down.  Hmm.  Ah, that’s it!  S-H-E-R-P-A.  When she slept in that tired, heaving way, every breath a sigh, he’d look at the contours of her tiny back visible through a grandma’s soft nightgown.  He would lie down, eyes roving through questions in the dark.  He was a sweet, sarcastic man.

 

The park bench is where he claps and cheers, the almond-shaped eyes and black hair of kids calling him to look and see, harabujee.  I’m up so high!

 

His daughter’s son tumbles from the slide chute, landing with a baby thud.  It’s those awkward three seconds when a child decides whether or not it’s worth crying.  Mr. Cho is up on his feet, bracing the side rail for balance.  And then comes a sensation of lightness.  Falling forward, his eyes are wide and his cane floats suspended before him.  His hands brace forward, flapping wildly and time resumes.  He’s flying.

 

For all their wit, she laughed at corny gibes.  The Supreme Cheese.  My kingdom.  My kingdom for a kiss. 

 

To his bewilderment, he falls forward only to rise up.  It’s amazing.  In seconds, he’s as high as a wind-battered kite, struggling against a surging draft.  He touches it, feels the string taut, and looks down.  There’s the playground from an entirely new angle.  From above, the swings are back-and-forth and the sight of children spiraling down amuses him.   He contorts his ascending body, seeking control.  He weaves through mirrored downtown buildings, looping under the Fourth Street Overpass.  The metro passes beneath this wrinkled Asian initiate (to Avian Society).  So, he glides, the numbing cold bracing his fingertips, whipping his hair full above his head.  And with incredible laughter, he swoops downward, bursting at the world, look and see! 

 

             ———————————

 

         —

 

         We Dance on a Thin Edge

 

       Hope is a dancer

       Sultry as can be

       You aren’t permitted a touch

       But you can see

       That she moves to a rhythm hidden.

 

       Her name was Truth –

       A horrible liar

       Trapped in a yellow briar

       And leaves us weeping.

 

       Blow me a kiss of all time’s sand

       I’ll soak it to spilling

       And make some plans

       For something worthwhile.

 

       Destiny is pretty

       She wears a cotton dress

       Billowing simple

       Like freckles.

 

       Faith, you are a stopple

       To a demijohn of foes

       Poured out in ladling dregs

           Of woe.

 

       Love is ever primping

       The winking girl of Troy

       But I’m ever thinking

             It’s a ploy.

 

                 Feet above head

                 Head above feet

                         And repeat.

 

     ————————-

      

 

Good late night dinner, Thongster.  Have a great time in Colorado.  I could retire there.  Look me in the eye next time, foo’.  Swanky Yankee.

 

    –

 

 

 

 

 clik!  Matt11:28

 

Jacob’s Ladder

 

The sky is a canvas and it’s painted two shades of blue, stretching for kilometers outward.  Near the rugged caplines of distant mountains, lenticular clouds shoot upward in highly unusual, layered formations.  Here, roasting in the rising heat of morning, a young man is sprawled on sand, a layer of dust for a blanket.  From above, it’s a pitiable sight. 

 

One can almost imagine his skin peeling slowly with every passing minute, epidermal moisture sizzling, evaporating into hungry, dry air.  Like the soft hyperactive bat of moth wings, his eyes flicker open as he winces from the sun’s unimpeded glare.  He sits up confused, bewildered by sparse surroundings, far removed from the sensual richness of night.

 

He saw a ladder ascending up and through the stratosphere.  Imagine celestial strobe lights draped liked Christmas over and through each rung.  It’s Broadway from Up on High as angels descend on either side, all the glitter and glory of the Maker on front window display.  The chorus sings a hyperactive Messiah, pre-dating Handel’s masterpiece by a few millennia.  The sky is overwhelmed with dancing, every step, every twirl, every flip and somersault choreographed to heavenly perfection.  Higher up, the seraphim sashay with canes of gold and top hats plucked from the ether.  The cherubim cantillate a round, declaring all goodness and grace, breaking out in lovely trills and soulful, blended melodies.  They’re rambunctious, toasting mugs of God-ordained beverage. 

 

Designed by men, it would all be gaudy but as it is, it comes from Above and so leaves the baby-faced man blinking and slack-jawed.  He’s consumed with equal parts – awe and fear.  It isn’t heroine, gin or women, but he’s stolen a blessing and he’s a marked man.  In the harrowing world of Pentateuch life, everyone’s running from something, often as the villain.

 

It’s boom-boom like a holy disco, bass thumping, everyone dancing wholesome.  Except for Jacob.  The spectacle of lights and colors overwhelm him and in the beautiful madness, he hears a message.   In that intoxicating crowd of heavenly beings, he finds redemption and Promise.

 

Mouth dry and sticky under the pain of a sleepless night, he’s sore from a twilight tossing among desert briars. Head pounding like a thousand obnoxious drummers marching in formation, free with the cymbals, he remembers.  The clouds shoot upward and the dust settles around him.   It’s the hangover we all pray for.

 

             ———————————–

 

 

                                  a damn good disguise

 

                         a damn good disguise

                         was found last week

                         bits and pieces gathered

                         by me.

 

                         a damn good disguise

                         is only useful if

                         you don’t get caught

                         by the powers that be.

 

                         a damn good disguise

                         let’s you walk incognito

                         through ribbing crowds

                         who are blinded but see.

 

                         a damn good disguise

                         is something you see

                         every day

 

                         a damn good disguise

                         is a bit of a ruse

                         because under those layers

                         the same person will be

                         the same person

                                         will be

                                         variations of you.

 

                                ————————————-

 

   

 

This week is moving along at a brisk pace.  Yo.  I may be moving… I’ll keep you posted. <wink>  I’ve had a lot on my mind and some things are a little hazy but life is good. 

 

Matt11:28

 

Hope Weds a Moment of Clarity

 

Silk maps were issued in the

         Second World

                      War

              To guide men

              Scanning the horizon

              Though the skies

              Gave little

              Bearing or

                   Sometimes

                           Caring.

 

     Rob a bank

     Or go for broke and

     Make it

     Federal.

       There’s a lot

        In those

        Registers and

        I’ve got the keys

        To the Holiest of

                   Kingdoms.

 

    Heaven is an

    Unknown but I believe

    It is more than

    Something here

    After a hard

    Day at the office.

 

    But I itemize my

    Life and think

    I might live like

    A hog in the fat

    House.

 

    (cat in the mouse house?)

 

             The world – my miracle oyster,

             Blueberry pancakes,

             Sweet sausage and a slice

 

                                    Of dreams.

 

———

 

Panel 1

 

Disheveled uniform and cap tilted askew, Charlie Brown stumbles into his living room, where his yellow-haired sister, Sally watches TV on her favorite beanbag chair.

 

Crestfallen: It’s the last game of the season and we lost.

 

With ne’er a stutter and but for a moment’s pause, Sally stands up and walks away, sharing a thought for her puzzled brother.

 

Nonchalant: So what does that mean?

 

Arms akimbo, hat in hand, strand of hair combed over, Charlie stands in that sparsely decorated room and waxes philosophical.

 

Waxing philosophical: Well, in the long run and as far as the rest of the world goes, it doesn’t mean a thing… 

 

And that’s that!

 

Still, in the last scene, Charlie’s head is buried in the beanbag of couch potatoes and despondence.  Hear the beans go shooka-shooka.  And he laments, hands shielding his head from the cruel indifference of life (and Lucy).

 

With feeling: But I can’t stand it.

 

Charlie Brown is a prematurely-aged boy, balding but always full of hope despite every missed field goal and bottom-of-the-ninth homerun.  There’s this little red-headed girl he can never muster the nerve to meet but he stands behind a tree, ever determined to make it all happen.

 

Voice of wisdom:  Wa wop wa wa wa wop.

 

———

 

 

Marla Marla – Baptism Back Then

 

Had a great time visiting St. Basil’s late in the afternoon.  I dozed for ten minutes or so.  <grin>  But I woke up brand spankin’ new.  I try to stop by at least once a week.  I know I mentioned it before but it really is a sanctuary.  It’s a beautiful building!  You always leave with a meaningful smile on your face.  With all my ambition (and even fear), I’m reminded of where I stand in the Big Scheme o’ Things.  Sometimes, when I’m driving, I think the world is a piece of skin peeling off of God’s bunion.* 

 

But I’m glad to be here.

 

 

*(Please refer to Westminster Catechism #81.)

 

clik! Matt11:28

Good Game

What a good game last night.  But what was up with Kansas’ woes at the line? 

UNC is offering Williams the position.  And what’s Carmelo to do?

                       Whoa.

Looks like a crazy day shaping up.  Have a good one.

Matt11:28

        ha!  tru dat.

The Port of Los Angeles is a strange little microcosm where truckers and dockworkers rule.  Full of roadhouses and bbq pits, it seems a bit strange and out-of-place until you remember where you are.  With pipes, gas storage facilities, and same-colored concrete structures everywhere, the place would be fun to study in detail.

Today is crazy. 

—

For late afternoon delirium… more Spam Haiku for you!

Cube of cold pinkness
Yellow specks of porcine fat
Give me a spork please

Slice the cold, pink block
Apply to sucking chest wound
Don’t need stitches now.

I eat it always
Said one man to his doctor.
Angioplasty.

Big Laker game tonight.  Here’s one forecast for their playoff hopes.

Matt11:28

 

Tabula Rasa

 

Newborn babies look nothing like those cute portraits you see at K-Mart or in Geddes cards.  Frankly, they’re pretty ugly and I know because I see them every day at all hours and always under the glaring stare of those damn artificial lights (St. Luke’s).  Soaked in a weird smelling mix of amniotic fluid and blood, a little squinting man leaves behind a constrained – yet I imagine comforting – world of a tiny womb and explodes into a frightening universe of clanging metal, beeping, clicking machinery, masked men and women scampering about in a frenzy of emotion, movement, sound.  His eyes not yet developed – it’ll take months – he can barely see a few feet in front of him and at that, the world is all lines, angles and blurs mixed together as he tries to make some collective sense of it all.  Imagine the sound and literal fury; a dark muted womb suddenly becomes an instantly forgotten memory and in its place, all of this.

 

I wonder if he feels pain the way we do.  I mean, science would tell me that his neurons are just now beginning their most crucial formational development as his mind processes patterns and responses to patterns and structure to even the most basic elements of baby life.  What does he see.  Do we create reality or does reality exist apart from us.  Sure, it’s late but I’ve had my coffee.  Look at Orion or Ursula Major, just something we’ve concocted to give us something to point at when walking with our kids or trying to impress that girl with a crooked smile.  The flickering sky is a jumbled mess of beautiful dots and what’s to keep me from creating my own constellations.  The pieces are out there, sure.  But we create meaning.

 

We’ve cut the cord and the little guy is going nuts.  All the crying disturbs some people but that’s just a baby’s way of saying, I’m here and what the hell is going on?   I don’t blame him.

 

And here’s the mother.  Great poets speak of a birthing mother’s beauty.  Once again, I don’t see it.  From my experience, this is when they are at their patently most unattractive - screaming, cursing, crying, fainting.  Drenched in sweat and tears, it’s a very raw thing to behold.  Maybe that’s the beauty.  There’s nothing pretentious about a woman when she gives birth.  Maybe it’s the one scene in all Life that remains completely pure and natural and even primitive.  I suppose all truth is beautiful in some abstract cosmic sense.

 

Strange how most all healthy babies calm down when held by their mother for the first time.  It’s the lullaby voice they’ve heard laughing and asking for ice cream over the past nine months.  Studies have shown they definitely prefer this voice above all others.

 

Frankly, some of these ladies are not the best people.  But for that moment, they are.  No matter where they’ve been, this marks a new day in their lives and while a good number fail as mothers, those hours resting and loving are rife with hope.  I’m moved by that thought: a new start and a clean slate in a building sterile and isolated from all the madness outside.  Life is just so much noise.  The beeping EKG, the clank of bloody calipers, nagging wives, insensitive husbands, the tick of another bill dropped in the mail, cars honking, people pissed, toy factories pumping steam, bullets whizzing thousands of miles away, and the pop of my joints every morning.

 

Exhausted, mother and child are asleep and everyone disbands to nap, gossip, or grab a cup of stale drip.  Just so much drama packed into one anesthetized room.  The quiet aftermath is pretty eerie but I find a nice dark corner and take a moment to breathe, absorbing the rhythmic whir and beating of all the machines.

 

I scrub my hands thoroughly and change, thinking of Home, the morning outside.  I press my fists to my eyes, colors exploding before me.  A man is looking for something.  Here, in this blooming, buzzing confusion.

 

 —————–

 

Matt11:28

Life is Pretty Grand

More so now than ever, I really feel one with the city of Los Angeles, my home.  I suppose that’s not too surprising but without getting sentimental, I’ve come to appreciate the grit and beauty of life out here.  Unlike the suburbs, I feel that the people I see daily, the cars I see honking, the homeless I see with outstretched cups, and the brown-gray haze that floats on the skyline make for a very authentic existence.  I’m sounding like a hokey Thoreau, I know.  But whereas he wrote of fleeing to the wilderness untainted, I think the opposite rings true now.  I love the outdoors and mountains like you wouldn’t believe (few things I enjoy more than the Pacific Crest) but in the end, it amounts to an escape.  Thoreau was concerned with life in its pure essence, apart from man’s expectations and noisy outward collective struggle.  A life of pure contemplation divorced from extraneous concerns like the latest fashion trends or the rise/fall of the economy.  Life stripped down to its wilderness necessities.

But that isn’t Life.  I don’t think it’s possible to know yourself (from the shallow to transcendental) apart from your fellow man.  Even in some weird mystical sense, he was wrong to assume that Man’s ultimate pure existence was a solitary one.  Maybe we all live lives of quiet desperation.  That may be true enough.  Still, though we may suffer alone, we live collectively whether we like it or not.  And even in the wilderness, civilization doesn’t disappear because we’re constantly struggling to be apart from it and in turn acknowledging it.  That’s the easy way to deal with life.

I love Los Angeles for its diversity and richness of activity and life.  Unlike the suburbs, that mumbling numbness has yet to take hold of the people here.  People are struggling and hoping and striving in such immediate ways and it’s right there in front of your face wherever you go.  We’re all crammed together.  That’s where you can see and feel Life in all its emotional/physical/spiritual depth because you see it all on crowded streets, the smell of Mexican doughnuts tempting you from panaderias.  Run down Pico during the late afternoons and you’ll see.  This is where you learn and grow and smile at mom’s pushing kids around the block in shopping carts.  Good stuff.

I’m sure the same rings true for New York if not more.

——

 

                               Backflip!                                                              Bruuuuuuuuuuce.

——–

City: Traffic

 

Hope smoke floats

  Just yea over our heads

  Like Big City haze

  But prettier

  And according to

  Most folk,

  Good for us.

 

Shed tears gladly

  Water gardens blooming

  Prosperity in a world that

  Would care

  Less.

 

Groaning beasts sway

  Under the horn

  Of dawn that cracks

  Whips with

  Utmost concern.

 

Big dreams rise

  Like skyscrapers

  That touch the sky

  And kiss the hand

  Of God.

 

Love and feeling

Hated and forlorn

But don’t be late.

 

        Everything and

        All at once.

 

Matt11:28

The Ceiling

 

Half-heartedly swept, yesterday’s paper cups and candy wrappers and condoms hidden well beneath the bleachers in a world of tumbledust and rats, a crowded gymnasium shakes with the tension of a crowd swaying, hypnotized and moved.   The emotions are all-at-once raw and surreal as khaki men raise their hands, cup their faces, close their eyes, just tired.  Modest women shed tears, their faces damp from the stir of quiet inward emotion, reflecting on deeper things.  His voice is that of a baritone, moving near high pitches in moments of excitement, still rumbling low and even sensuous during thoughtful scheduled pleas.  For the night, it is a strange beast of a room, alive and pitiful, modulating with the strains of music, coffee shop guitar, and Answers.

 

Somewhere else, a classroom burgeons with the hormonal excitement of a new year as gangs of acne and heavy make-up slam notebooks and chew pens, identity in the making.  Through minutes, thoughts traverse from the banal to the insecure to the task-at-hand.  The profanity of five languages scratched into the glossy pressed wood born of boredom, surly teenagers scribble notes, copy from a whiteboard, draw pictures of naked women or comic books.  His voice is that of a baritone as he banters with youth in a captivating tone of disinterest – all very calculated like the loopy curves of chalk S’s.  The next forty minutes are of Revolution and change, a room full of laughter, questions, Potential.

 

The clouds are dark, black with fury, bullets of rain, slamming into Midwestern dirt and concrete tire-skids.  Rolling violently through the wet gale draping the craft like an enemy blanket, the plane heaves forward, the buzzing engines offering solace, direction, sound.  Yet, everything is quiet, as grass green dots move haltingly over round screens, lines circling steady like the dreaded metronome that sat on his piano.  His voice is that of a baritone as he issues commands with a monotonous staccato clip.  In the distance, bright flashes of searing orange and red, chunks of mixed metal descending in and through the clouds, the thought of far-off lands, new faces, hope, Adventure.

 

Still, amidst, there’s the sound of a baby giggling and a man and woman holding hands under the spilling light of a hallway.  Hair grey and bodies hunched with affection, resting in the warm glow of knowing they’ve survived with laughter, their love deep and full of Grace.

 

In Greek tragedies, the choragus never sings wisdom or admonition to the man; rather, they simply stand to the side and mourn with him, lamenting that he was ever born. 

 

Tonight, he simply stares at the ceiling, his room not yet dark from the faint glow of city streetlights, night shadows dancing.  Words mumble forth between long pauses that cover all his expectations, wants, and Fear.

 

Soon, it’s quiet.

 

——–

 

this photo won a Pulitzer back in ’99.  there’s a lot to look at!

 

A good day, a good start to another week.

 

Matt11:28

 

Ninevah

 

It’s a body in there, somewhere

Floating to, fro, over

The inward workings of

A Beating Heart

Beating a rhythm through

The belly of Three

Ready and waiting

To throw you out

Of your Grinding hole

Daily as you lay

There eaten away

By the brine and dark

Deep dark below

Your thoughts of purpose

The ebb and flow

 

It’s a body on there, somewhere

Touched by the lapping water

Of a rising cell there

Where you once slept

Hidden and punished

For running away

 

——

 

 

 

I’m going to go and see dancing northern lights on tundra twilight come my 30th birthday.  I’m yet intent on becoming a weathered, world-wise globetrotter.  Ha!  We’ll see.

 

I really like Jonathon Alter.  Here’s a solution for peace that might actually work but as he points out, it’s probably too late.  Click. 

 

 Dean might be the most exciting candidate but I think he’ll alienate too many in the mainstream.  Matt11:28