As I mentioned before, 2005 wasn’t the best
year for books, for me. Determined to do better this year, I posted
on AskMe to ask for recommendations of people’s favorite books. I got
a lot of answers and got started reading them one by one. This year,
I hope to post about each of the books as I read them. So to catch
up, I’ll write about the ten I’ve read so far in the next few days.
 First up, is Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler. I have never been a big fan of
short story collections so I am not even sure why I picked this out
to be my first book of the year. Maybe it’s because the MeFi reader
said it was the book that got her out of her 2005 book-slump.
Whatever prompted me, I am really glad I decided to read it. Kissing
in Manhattan is fantastic. It’s not the kind of book I would have
picked up in a million years. Each of the short stories is about a
different tenant who lives in a fictional building in Manhattan. The
stories, while different, sort of weave through each other in that
the same characters pop up in different stories and you sort of find
out some more about them through another tenant’s story. It’s very
well-written, sort of weird stories but good imagery, great character
development and very visual. I thought about the characters and the
stories well after I’d finished the book, which, for me, is a sign of
a great read. What a wonderful way to start the year.
Just so you know that I am not exaggerating when I tell you about
what a happy boy David is, I wanted to share with you a recent photo
I took while he and I were laughing at each other. Isn’t he so very
beautiful?
A friend of mine asked me about my favorite movie the other day.
Anyone who’s a movie-snob would cringe at some of my favorites and
probably think I am an uncultured, cheesy-movie-liking idiot. But I
don’t care much for movie-snobs (or any other snobs for that matter)
so I don’t really care what they think. Anyhow, my favorite movie of
all time is still the same as it was when I applied to college 14
years ago.
My favorite movie of all time is still Dead Poets Society. While I
was very lucky to not have parents like the ones in the movie and
wouldn’t nearly qualify my life as oppressed and predetermined as
those students, the message of sucking the marrow of life resonated
strongly with me then and still does today. There are so many things
I like to do and so many things I yearn to learn. So many things I
wish I could do like design and play an instrument and draw well and
write well and be more creative and artistic. I feel like the amount
of things I want to do/learn/be would easily cover several lifetimes.
I don’t know how to figure out which path to take. There are many
aspects of my life that I love and wouldn’t give up. I love being
married. I love that I’ve shared so much of my life with Jake and
that we have all these memories that we can unleash like a treasure
chest. I love reminiscing with him. I love being a mom. I love the
joy and wonder David has brought into my life. The little moments
where he does something completely unexpected, the minutes after he
wakes up from a nap all flushed, the hours we spend bonding while I
nurse him. I wouldn’t give those up for anything. I love reading. I
dedicate several hours of my week to reading books and those hours
are some of my most cherished. My little escape into the minds and
worlds of others. My opportunity to experience life in a different
way. That’s something else I am not willing to give up. Those are my
core three that need to be in my life. There are many other time-
consuming activities I like that I’d rather not stop doing like:
photography, writing this site, scrapbooking my son’s memories,
taking classes with/for David, etc.
But then there are others. Hours wasted having petty arguments around
office politics. Hours wasted trying to configure some kind of
installation or a piece of code that’s missing a stupid parenthesis
or semicolon (yey for python). Hours killed with being in a bad mood
or stuck in traffic or running stupid errands or having a fight. I
know it’s impossible to dispose of all of these. And maybe I am just
itching because it’s time to try something new. I think that my main
problem is that I feel insatiable. I feel like picking one thing is
not going to satisfy me since I still have to give up picking
something else.
I had told myself that if Jake did well enough for us to live on his
salary, I’d go back to school. Maybe get a PhD in Child Psychology.
Maybe get one in Computer Science. Or maybe I’d do a collection of
Masters degrees. One for math, one for computer science, one of
english, one for statistics. One for design. One for psychology. Art
history. Linguistics. Photography. Several individual languages. I
really can go on for quite some time. Now, I’m thinking maybe I
should just take classes. I don’t know if that’s even possible. I
don’t know that the schools I’d want to attend offer the option of
just taking classes. But I suppose theoretically if I had enough
money, I could convince them to let me. I wonder if that would quench
my thirst. Make me feel like I was finally sucking the marrow of life.
Make me feel like I was actually living several lifetimes in one.
The Birch Aquarium is a few miles from our house but we hadn’t been
up there until a few weeks ago when David and I met a friend of
Jake’s wife and her children. When Jake’s mom came to visit a week
later, I suggested we go back there since David liked it so much. One
of the rooms in the aquarium shows fish that blend in perfectly with
their environment and use camouflage not to become prey. I love sea
horses but I had never seen these little creatures before. These sea
dragons must come from the same family as sea horses since their
faces look so similar. I know this isn’t fantastic photography but I
thought the little fish was sort of neat and I haven’t been out
photographing for so long that I snapped a shot of it.
Anyone who’s seen David and Jake quickly exclaims that David is an
exact replica and then proceeds to ask whether I’m sure I’m the mom.
David really does look exactly like Jake and given that Jake was the
cutest baby ever, I have no complaints. As he continues to grow, I am
curious which one of our non-physical genes ended up in the little boy.
He’s one of the happiest kids I’ve ever seen. All you have to do to
get him to laugh is to laugh in his general vicinity and he breaks
into a guffaw. If you follow behind him as he walks around the house,
he quickly falls in to a game of chase and starts giggling. Loudly.
The joyous and constantly amused personality trait is definitely
inherited from Jake as well. I was a very quiet child with lots of
sticking to my mom’s skirt and crying.
Lest you think he hasn’t got any of my genes, I was sitting at my
table a few days ago when I could no longer see or hear David. My
work area is open to the living room and I can often see him playing.
When he goes out of sight, I can still hear the conversation between
him and the toys. If he disappears for over a minute, I generally
call him and he comes back to the living room or kitchen (which is
also fully visible from my work area) and laughs at me. On this
occasion, he had been completely out of my sight for a minute or two
and I couldn’t hear him talk at all. I yelled for him and he didn’t
come back. Worried, I leapt from my chair and ran towards the bedroom
thinking he was eating some crazy bathroom stuff he pulled out of the
drawers. On my way through the living room, I spotted him right by
the bookcases, quietly reading his book (well, maybe not reading but
looking through). He looked up at me with a quizzical expression and
went back to his reading.
That he got from me.
Almost a month ago, David turned one. While it was relatively
uneventful for him, despite the birthday party we threw on his honor,
it was a rather huge deal for me. I always knew I wanted to have
children but I never really felt ready to have them. When Jake and I
decided to start trying, it was mostly because we knew we both wanted
kids and we knew it might be a bad idea to wait much longer in case
we had problems. It all happened very quickly and next thing we knew
we were actually pregnant. Not that I am complaining but it was
sooner than we expected, that’s all.
I spent the first few months of my pregnancy worrying about the well
being of the baby and throwing up. Once I started feeling better, I
concentrated fully on worrying about the baby’s well-being. I worried
about it so much that I barely had enough energy left to worry about
the birth. David did me two favors and came out relatively quickly
and quite perfect-looking.
I spent the last year also worrying. What did I know about being a
mother? Was I feeding him enough? Was I eating right? Was he warm
enough? Was he too warm? David was and is a perfect child. He eats
like a champ, he now sleeps like a champ, he walks around like he’s
been doing it all his life and he laughs more than I’ve ever seen
anyone laugh.
There are no words for the amount of joy he has brought into our
lives. Even though it’s almost a whole month late, congrats of
turning a whole finger, my son, I am so proud of you.
I forgot how much time it takes to tweak this site. I’ve spent the
better part of a Sunday updating my scripts and that’s no fun.
So I am trying to find a way to allow me to post more frequently and
I have decided to go back to the very original weblog look which
means everything gets dumped to the main page regardless of its
category. No special section for photos or david. If you don’t like
the topic of a post, feel free to skip it.
I am in a constant state of flux on what to do about this site. This May, I will have been writing on and off for six years. For the first three or four years, I did write consistently and I looked forward to coming home and writing down my thoughts and feelings. Some days it was an effort but most days it really wasn’t. I still regularly go back to those posts and reread them so I am really glad they’re there. Not to mention all the photos I’ve accumulated over the years. They are all fantastic records of those years. Since I stopped working at the investment bank, it seems I haven’t really written consistently. I had a bout of consistent photo posting but even that came to an end with David’s birth.
The times when I’ve taken an “official” break, I’ve felt like a weight has been lifted off of me. At least once a day, I think of the site and how I should be updating and writing more. I think of taking photos and get depressed at the state of my life. But then when the time comes to write, I look at my to-do list and look at the things I have to give up. I have a full-time job and a part-time job. I have a little boy who’s getting more demanding each day. I take photos of him every day and post them weekly for my family to see. I am making a scrapbook for his first year which does seem to take countless hours of my crazy time. I still try to read a book a week (or two weeks) since it’s one of the few things that makes me feel peaceful and sane. I get around 50 emails a day that I have to respond to which are besides the over 100 I get for work. Not to mention the daily things like preparing 3 meals a day for the little boy and feeding them to him. We go to music class once a week, two different mom’s groups once a week each, a baby book club once every two weeks, and a ton of random crap that just comes up.
The only peaceful and uninterrupted times I have in the day are from 6:30pm to bedtime. Lately, thanks to my sinuses, I have been going to bed as early as 8pm which means I have 1.5 hours to eat dinner, catch up with my husband and go through my entire to-do list. So, I’ve been feeling slightly overwhelmed lately and giving this site (which hasn’t been updated with any regularity for months now) seems so enticing.
But then I can’t get myself to do it. This feels like a part of me. Something I poured so much of myself into. Something I can’t seem to let go. So I sit here, frustrated and unsure and tired of going back an forth. I most likely will make yet another set of changes to see if I can make it more enticing, easier for me to update more regularly. And if that doesn’t work either, well we’ll get there when we get there I guess.
Apologies for all the whining, it’s been a weird few weeks.
I am sick and tired of reading/hearing how parents feel like their kids owe them things. I understand that different people have differing points of view and all are valid. Well, this is my space so here goes nothing. Kids don’t ask to be created. Having a baby is something people decide to do (or accidentally fall into in some cases but we’re going to ignore those cases for today’s point) and people try to set up their lives as much as possible to accommodate this new being.
Having a baby is hard work, bringing it up is even harder. I am only at the very beginning of it and I can already admit it’s very very hard at times. And he hasn’t even come close to being a teenager yet. By no means, do I feel the need to belittle the amount of work, emotion, money, and sacrifice that goes into raising a human being. However, I feel like parents lose sight of the fact that this was completely their own decision. You had this baby because you wanted to. You fed and clothed and educated him/her because it was your obligation as a parent since this being that you decided to bring into this world would be helpless without you. Since you chose to create this person, I believe it’s your responsibility and duty to see it all the way through. Then, if the now grownup decides to “pay you back” by taking care of you and wanting to be with you, that’s great. But I don’t feel like that’s the kid’s duty. I feel like it’s my duty as a parent to raise my child such that he can learn to take care of himself and be the kind of parent that he’ll want to be around.
I remember reading Khalil Gibran’s words many years ago:
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.” And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
I know many parents wish the best for their kids and tell themselves that all the things they don’t allow them to do or tell them to do are for the kid’s best interest. But the desire to control one’s children seems too enticing. It seems so overwhelming that everyone does it. Even when the kid has kids of his/her own. The parents still have expectations and still try not to let go.
It’s been a relatively long week and hence the lack of updates. Even though I’ve had nothing urgent or critical to do, I’ve felt remotely annoyed and stressed out all week. Normally, I’d look forward to the weekend to get some rest but I have two shoots this weekend, which generally means I’ll be working my ass off and before I know it, it will be Monday again. And, as opposed to most normal companies, my place of business does not feel MLK day is an important enough holiday to observe. Good Friday? yes, absolutely. MLK day – no fucking way.
Thanks to the generous number of replies to my askme thread, I checked out twelve new books from the library. I gather some of them should be good. David has also generously lent me one so I am hoping I am set at least for the next few weeks. I am still in the blah zone for books, and feeling like there’s too much mediocrity there compared to excellence but I guess that’s the case by definition isn’t it?
I find that when I am in this mood, I am always tired, constantly eating bad crap, unable to focus and/or function in a positive manner. I am impatient with people i love and frustrated at the drop of a hat. I often don’t know how to get out of the funk either so I hide under the covers with a good book and pray it goes away sooner than later. I have two evening fun-events to go to next week and maybe they’ll be what I needed all along.
Or maybe not. Who knows?
One of the comments Jake’s brother made at our wedding was about Jake’s tendency to obsess about things. He mentioned how he had a thing for remote control cars. And then he had a thing for something else and he’d obsess about that endlessly. We all laughed at the time, mostly because it was so true. Jake does obsess about things and delve into them wholeheartedly. So much so that it’s as if nothing else exists. He gets to be a complete expert on that particular thing. And then he moves on to the next. Cars, comic books, computers. While this is definitely true about Jake, I’ve been noticing that it’s slightly true about me, too.
I spent five years trying to write novels and short stories. I studied Japanese non-stop for six months and then continued regularly for two more years. I learned to knit and knit anything I could get my hands on. I picked up wire jewelry and made earrings I never wore. I picked up photography and that particular obsession took me all the way to starting a small business. I have always been more breadth oriented than depth, but I still find myself obsessing about things. I find that the initial excitement of learning something new is so intoxicating that I momentarily become unable to think about anything else.
This is also true when I meet new people. I want to know all about them. Their life, their thoughts, their preferences, their ideas of right and wrong. I can talk to them nonstop for several weeks before the newness wears out and I prefer to come up for some air.
I am wondering whether this is a trait particular to people like Jake and me or does everyone experience it to a certain extent. Are we crazy obsessive people or is it just human nature? Does your brain actually secrete something different when you have a new experience or learn something different?
I hope so, cause that way makes me sounds a lot less crazy.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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