Tag Archives: twentysomethingism

The Clock is Tickin’

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I’ve been playing Brandon Flowers’ CD Flamingo over and over and over, and then over again, every day for the past… however many days it’s been since it came out.

I like a lot of the songs on the album, and I go through phases with my favorite. My current one is “The Clock Was Tickin’” (it was Magdalena for two weeks before that). The beat’s not bad, but what I really dig is the lyrics.

And the weeks fly by and the years roll on
They say patience is a virtue but the doctor says she don’t have long
You stood up and tried your damndest not to listen
But that clock up on the wall was tickin’

When they told you to clear the room, that’s when it hit you
You watched as the caravan took your sweetheart away
The arguments and fights and money troubles seem so worthless
As the kids throw yellow roses on her grave

And the weeks fly by and the years roll on
The house is quiet now and everything inside it seems to know she’s gone
There’s a picture of you both sixteen years old just kissing
And that clock up on the wall was tickin’ – Brandon Flowers

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the time I have, specifically the time I have with my parents. Some time last week I had the thought that I need to record down everything about my parents, who they are, what they did, and what their dreams were before they had me. What were they like? When my parents are gone, how will I keep the link with my roots? I wonder if that’s the question children of immigrants face at some point?

Michael Hawley once commented to me, “You’re as American as apple pie.” That may be so, but a part of me is still as Vietnamese as… um… pho bo vien? Anyway, as I get older, I want to get to know my parents more, not as the archetype of father and mother, but for who they are.

I’ve also had a lot of thoughts about the pace of my life and the time that I spend with my parents. I would say that I’m a recovering type A, but I haven’t recovered enough. I don’t know if I would call myself “overworked”, per se. I love what I do, and I’ve got an obsessive personality type to throw myself at things, sometimes to my own demise, like staying up too late, waking up too early, and overcommitting. I want to do it all.

I read somewhere about “the rocker test”, where, when making a decision, think about when you’re 80 and sitting on your rocker on your porch, what will you regret the most? I liked the rocker test concept when I read about it, but I confess, as a mere intellectual concept to entertain. I suspect if I were to put it to the test, I would have to give up a couple (a lot) of things I’ve already built up the habit for, and maybe I just don’t have the guts to admit it to myself yet, because I would have to come clean with myself. Being honest with oneself is the hardest.

Anyway, I’ve gotten off track. The point is, today, I spent a good chunk of it with my parents, and I’m grateful that they’re still healthy and able to enjoy a gorgeous Autumn day with me.

My parents and me, October 2010.

‘O let not Time deceive you

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Last night, I hung out with my friend Shannon who used to live in Seattle but decided to run off and marry an Italian boy and now calls Milan home (I know, I hate her too.)

Shannon is one of my kindred souls. People used to joke that she was the Irish version of me, or that I was an Asian of her. We are both loud, giggly, always on the go, and blonde (well, she’s the real deal, and I’m a fake (although my boyfriend once told me, “Are you sure your roots aren’t really blond?”)).

We used to climb mountains, rock walls, and trees together. We used to stay up way too late with cocktails and wine, going all over Fremont and ending up at my place, looking over the Ballard bridge and the Olympic mountains, talking about boys and life, and more boys.

When Shannon moved away, I knew it was the end of an era, but it honestly really didn’t hit me until last night. We found ourselves in Fremont again, standing in front of the High Dive. The streets are still here, the bars are still here, but we’re no longer the young twentysomething girls we used to be. Oh, we’re still us, for sure, but we’re both at a different place in life. And I mean that literally, with her living half way around the world.

When we said goodbye, a tinge of some kind of emotion came over me. I don’t know what it was, really. Not totally sadness. It’s hard to describe, but it was this feeling of knowing that we will only see each other a handful amount of times in our lifetime from here on out. This is totally different from before, when we said goodbye, we’d know that we’ll see each other again soon enough, especially when we lived 20 blocks away on Greenwood Avenue. We thought our time together was limitless.

Shannon's idea of breakfast before heading up for a day of hard climbing

Tonight, I overheard a conversation between my parents and a friend of theirs visiting from out of town. They were talking about the last time they saw each other, and when the next reunion will be. For them, I can only imagine that they, too, know their time together is short, even shorter than Shannon’s and mine.

I used to go running a lot around Volunteer Park and Lakeview Cemetery, where Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee are buried. More and more, I appreciate the Paul Bowles quote written on Brandon’s tombstone:

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that.

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.” — Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky.

As I left my yoga studio and looked up at the sky tonight, the full moon was trying to break through the thick Pacific Northwest clouds. Besides than the urge to howl and thump my chest, I smiled at it. It sounds really cheesy, especially in a blog. Oh well, you had to be there. Happy Autumn Equinox.

Shannon having a rare quiet moment on my balcony, probably watching the sun setting over the Olympics

I See You’re Got The Twitter… Heh heh… I’ve Got The Twitter Too

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A lot has been said, or tweeted, about Twitter. And, like Amazon(tm) reviews, it’s either all love or all hate, either OMG THE BEST THING SINCE THE WHEEL *AND* THE SLICE BREAD! Or, This, Too, Shall Pass.

For the record, I don’t have an altar for @twitter (or @biz, @ev, @dom). I also don’t have any death wish for the medium and pray for the return of Life BT (Before Twitter).

What I’m really interested in is what it reveals about us, and by “us”, I mean me. And by me, I mean humanity. It’s this little pet project called twentysomething existentialism that’s got me asking all these questions, namely, what does it mean to be human? (Oh yeah, full cheese ahead, get your wine bottle(s) ready.)

So what I want to talk about here is this article I read and heard on On the Media: The Point of Twitter. You can read and listen to the whole segment in all of its glory, including who’s using it for what and how and where, but here are some highlights that are interesting to me.

Well, there is something kind of hilarious about people constantly interrupting their lives to transmit 140-character factoids and random banal thoughts to people who must interrupt their own lives to receive them.

…people simply like to share, not only what they think is cool that you should check out but the reality of what they’re doing or seeing or just thinking right this second.

Hmm, malaria angst and lunch orders, the terrible and the trivial. What do they have in common? Well, what they have in common is that they are variously in Ferreira’s thoughts, and sharing thoughts is something people do, fulfilling a primal human need for keeping in touch, even virtual touch, with other humans.

The magical, exciting, calming, life-affirming charge of human contact. Sociologist Elizabeth Pullen has made a study of Twitter’s attractions. The main one, she says, is community, and especially communal experience.

The most popular events are live events that are televised, that people are watching Miss America or the Oscars or European soccer, football games and tweeting about live events while they’re happening. And that’s just kind of interesting to me – that people want to share the moment.

So that’s kind of a communal experience shared online that I don’t think the people at Twitter ever anticipated.

But data mining is like any other. The deeper you dig, the more value you bring to the service, and that value is enormous.

10,000 Joys and 10,000 Sorrows

And perhaps we have always known that old Buddhist saying to be true, that there are 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows in the world, but nowhere is it more obvious than on Twitter. I once heard somewhere, probably from Pema Chodron, that the difference between you and that crazy person saying random things on the bus or on the street corner is that he/she’s saying it out loud. We are not that adept at controlling our thoughts either, we just know better not to blurt it out.

Touching the Void

Besides amplifying our inability to concentrate (sorry to paint such a bleak picture of our psyche), Twitter enables the ability to virtually touch. Reading this concept made me do a double take, because touching is something that no one’s really talked much about, though we all know how powerful the feel of a human touch can be. Years ago when I worked on a project with Microsoft Research to explore ways that people communicate, it was something that we mulled over: how do we emulate touch in a virtual environment?

To Err… er… Share is Human

As the population of Social Media gurus outgrows world population, (although, there are rumors that they are being killed off by ninjas), as we are told to obey more rules and tips and tricks for SM (not to be confused with tips and tricks for… uh… you know…), I wonder how often, and how much money we’ll have to pay, to be reminded that To Share is Human? (Oooh, that’s good, I’m trademarking this ;) ).

Humans can't fly, so they tweet instead.

Humans can't fly like us, so they tweet instead.