Rubiks
July 8th, 2009
Haik and I were on the subway in Tokyo yesterday heading from our couchsurfers apartment into Shibuya. We had only three stops left to go until we reached ours. We were standing, holding on the the hanging handles when Haik says, “What the hell…” I asked him what and he told me this kid on the train just solved the Rubiks Cube. He motioned in the kids direction and by the time I glanced over the cube was such a jumble of colors I hardly believed Haik and thought maybe the kid had just gotten one side all one color. We had just stopped once and had two more to go. I kept watching the kid and in a few minutes the puzzle was solved again, incredibly impressive but I had a feeling maybe he didnt mix it up too much from the last time (when Haik had seen it) since it was so quickly after. I actually laughed out loud. This kid was about eleven I would guess. Well, while stopped the second time the kid mixed up the cube quite a bit and I kept my eye on him. The train started moving. This would be impossible for myself or anyone I know (sorry to anyone I know!). The kid starts turning and twisting, sometimes I swear he was not even looking at the Cube at all. At times he would stop and appeared to be thinking and calculating in his head and then he would make some quick turns and twists with the cube again. He got one side solid but the rest were still a jumble of colors. I knew we had to be getting close to our stop and I even said to Haik, “We cant get off, I have to see this kid solve it…” The kid kept contemplating and moving his hands quickly about the Cube, hardly watching what he was doing. The train started to slow and the kids hands moved faster at the same time. It was as if he had been teasing us and had us doubting he would be able to solve the whole thing between two stops. The train stopped at our stop and what would you guess, the Cube was completed and solved. I laughed out loud again. I looked at the kid and he looked at me and I just gave him a nod and he smiled and nodded back. When we shuffled out of the train and passed the kid sitting near the doors I just smiled at him again and gave him a slight look of disbelief that he probably knows too well if he solves the Rubiks Cube on the subway trains on a regular basis! I couldnt stop cracking up walking out of the subway station…
Three Monkeys
July 5th, 2009
So in Nikko we found this awesome cafe. There are some interesting magazines to pick up and look through and a handful of antiques around that give the place a cool atmosphere. It was comfy and cozy and on the second floor of this little run-down looking building. When still outside and across the street, approaching the cafe, Haik said the place looked cool and I thought he was joking because it looked so janky. Anyway, once inside it was very cool. It is in the corner of the little building and large windows wrap all the way around. There was an old drum set in the corner and a guitar to play with. There were maybe six or seven mismatched tables and chairs. The girl who worked there was super nice too. I got a sandwich, going out on a limb because there were only about six choices of food. I asked what it was and she said shrimp and avocado. I asked if it was hot or cold and she said cold. I kind of wanted a warm sandwich (I cant stand cold shrimp…) and she immediately told me she could make it that way. I didnt want to be picky but she offered and I took her up on it. The sandwich turned out to be shrimp, asparagus (not avacado), lettuce, and honey mustard on wheat bread. It was served with onion soup. Not your typical Japanese cuisine but not something I would make at home either. It was delicious! A great surprise since I can be a little picky at times and am not good at blindly ordering. Anyway, we hung out there for a while while it rained (yea, we went to Japan during the rainy season… actually has been nice up until now when it thunder storms every night). I was sitting on a bench putting on my shoes before leaving and the girl came up to me and asked where I was from. Then she kneeled in front of me, which was odd to me but I think normal there, and we had a short conversation about my traveling in Japan. I told her we liked it there (at the cafe) and the food was wonderful. Haik then told her we would be back the next day. Well, we did go back the next day, she remembered I liked the sandwich warm and we also got some noodles that were delicious. We hung out for a bit again, watching the cars below us and just relaxing. When I was putting on my shoes she came to talk to me again. She put out her hands and said “This is for you,” and she gave me a small wooden carving of the three monkeys. The three monkeys are the “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” monkeys. She asked if I had seen them as they are near by (at or in a temple or shrine, I cannot remember exactly). I knew they were there because I read about them the day before but failed at finding them. Either way, I felt so good inside after she gave me that small gift! The small kindness of people always takes me back. I am not even sure why she did that, I mean, we came one day and told her we would come back the next and did. We really loved the place and she was super kind but clearly she neednt give anything more. It was very sweet and I am happy to have the three monkeys to bring home and always remind me of the random kindness of people.
NBA updates via text and my Pa
June 3rd, 2009
Text messages from my dad make me happy. Especially when they are updating me on game six of the eastern conference NBA finals while I am driving across the country…
9:51pm
Orlando up 18 at the half. They held Lebron scoreless in 2nd qtr. Its 58 to 40. Yea ha baby.
10:31pm
Magic up by 16 at end of 3rd qtr. Its 86 to 70. Gotta hold on now
10:37pm
91 to 70 with 9 min left in game
11:10pm
Its over now. Cavs came back and won. Just kidding ha ha ha. Orlando won 103 to 90. Held James to 4 in the 4th. It is a good day. Love ya, Pa
Eggs y Conejos
April 15th, 2009
Easter morning I went into work and Juan asked me, “Adrienne, why mucho eggs y… (he puts his index and middle finger up on each hand and holds a hand up to each side of his head), you know, the animal… conejos?” “Yea, bunnies… o, rabbits,” I reply, thinking about how funny the charades can be when explaining ideas without a language in common. “Yea,” he says, “why mucho eggs y conejos today? I go to the store and everywhere…” “I don’t know,” I told him, “es porque… Easter?” I explain, waiting to see if the word “Easter” is understood. “Yea, I know, but what is the… mea… me… meaning?” “Significado?” I respond, trying to remember the Spanish word for meaning, “I don’t know, I don’t know why,” I told him. And suddenly I felt very silly. Eggs? Plastic eggs, painted eggs, bunnies… sometimes people dressed as giant bunnies. What the hell. So strange. Everything felt so nonsensical and I felt so silly and had absolutely no answer for him. I just kept looking at him with a confused expression and saying… “I don’t know… es… extrano.” It’s strange. He concluded the discussion for me. “Es… tradition,” he said. Yea… tradition. I think I was more bewildered than him about the whole “tradition” after that conversation. He was satisfied with it simply being “tradition,” but I just felt silly.
Liliana came into work later that day asking the same questions. She explained to me how in Peru they wouldn’t work for three days and celebrate but there were definitely no eggs or bunnies.
In the evening I busted out the hard-boiled eggs I had colored the night before. “Que es eso?” What is that? “Un huevo,” I answered. The brightly colored egg was clearly an egg to me, but apparently not so obvious to those not familiar with this strange “tradition.” I got a handful of of confused, questioning looks as I began to peel my egg. I heard one guy explaining to another in Spanish I could barely understand that it was an egg, but it was painted… hardly confident in what he was saying and confused all the while. Another guy looked closely at the striped egg, and then at me with crunched eyebrows, confused, and I just returned the expression with an “I don’t know” face. What explanation could I give?
Word Order
April 9th, 2009
I am forever enthralled with language. With the pronunciation, the acquisition of language, and especially relationships between languages and the evolution and changing of languages. All aspects of language interest me.
Word order is a funny thing. It is hard to get used to when learning a new language and always feels wrong and unfamiliar. There is one word order rule comparison I would like to explain that I find interesting and sometimes amusing. While I know there are many languages that share these rules, I will be comparing Spanish and English. The basic rule is simple. In English: adjective(s) first, noun second. In Spanish: noun first, adjective(s) second. For example: Square plates vs. Platos (plates) cuadrados (square). Or: Red hair vs. Pelo (hair) rojo (red). With me? I have to admit that the word order of Spanish makes much more sense to me. If you are reading about something I believe it would be more beneficial to know WHAT is being spoken about before the description if the object. I believe it is easier to form a picture in your head. If I used the Spanish word order I may describe to you a: chair small brown broken. First, you would picture a chair, and with each additional adjective, alter and transform that mental image of a chair to fit what I just described. If I first told you something was small, then brown, then broken, and finally told you the object I was describing was a chair, that feels backwards. I know both are understood but for the sake of arguing which rule seems to make the most sense, I have to go with the Spanish.
However, the English word order rule of adjective first, noun second has one great advantage. Telling you that the man I just saw had a really long, stiff, purple… coat just doesn’t have the same effect when you already know I am talking about a jacket.
We are toys…
April 7th, 2009
From my sister:
Today in the car Caitlin said from the back seat, “Mama, there are giants playing with us.” I replied, “There are?” And she said, “Yes. We are actually their toys.”
Then I said, being clever, “Well then, tell the giant to pick us up and put us down in Florida.” She, never missing a beat, said to me as if I were a silly child, “He can’t hear us, we are too small.” Then she yelled for him to put us in Florida and when nothing happened she said, “See?”
Runaway
April 6th, 2009
I parked my car across the street around 1 AM the other night, gathered up my things, and started to make my way towards my house. I heard someone yell “Hey!” but ignored it and kept crossing the street. I didn’t even look back, not wanting to be bothered by whoever was wandering the neighborhood at that time. I heard them shout again and this time I looked back. A young high school-aged girl started towards me. “Excuse me, do you have a phone I can borrow?” “Why?” I asked her. I wasn’t trying to get my phone stolen. “I just ran away from my house and I want to call my mom and tell her I am coming back.” I instantly took notice of the two bags slung over her shoulder, hurriedly stuffed with unfolded clothes inside. “Why’d you run away?” “My parents found a liiiiittle bit of pot in my room when my stepdad has a whole closet full. I tried to go to my friend’s house but they won’t let me stay there and they have the cops looking for me and my friend Tara’s house just got raided…” she explained calmly. I asked her what the number she wanted to dial was, punched the numbers in, and pressed send. As I handed the phone over to her I said, “You try and steal my phone, I kick your ass.” She said, “Okay, I live just over there,” and pointed to the street around the block. She talked to her mom… “I am using some girl’s phone, yes, some random girl who was just getting out of her car… I am going to come home now. Yes. Will you tell the cops to stop looking for me? Okay, yea… Bye.” She handed back my phone and told me her name was Jordan. I told her my name and then asked her how old she was. “Fifteen.” Fifteen?! My world started flying backwards. Fifteen? Seriously? Just a baby. This pretty girl with straight dirty blonde hair and a tiny stud in her nose. I started thinking about when I was fifteen and how long ago that was or at least feels and about how I could never have related to this girl when I was fifteen and then I thought some more and realized I actually really could have. She asked me how old I was and I told her. Then I asked if she went to Start, it being the nearest public school. “Yea. Well… I used to… I dropped out,” was her reply. My thoughts flew back again to how I never could have ever fathomed the idea of dropping out. It just wasn’t something that could have crossed my mind. We both stepped out of the way of a car coming down the road, having forgotten we were standing in the street. “I enrolled in Phoenix online, today was the first day actually. But I didn’t even log in,” she told me. “You can’t drop out,” I said, “You are going to end up with three babies by the time you are twenty.” Maybe not the best response, but my first honest thought. I started to have real concern for this girl and wanted to tell her so many things. All the things you can never understand until you have realized them yourself. I said, “High school is bullshit, even college is bullshit sometimes, but you have to do it. You just have to.” “I know… I will remember what you told me when I am sitting in jail tonight.” “The cops don’t give a shit about your little bit of pot,” I told her. “I am actually going to try and go to the school for the arts… because I am kind of creative and stuff…” she added. “Please, do that,” I reaffirmed her. “Okay, well I better go,” she said. “Take care of yourself,” I told her. And she started down the sidewalk back in the direction she had come. I walked into the house and didn’t realize until I finished showing that I really should have at least walked her home since it was so late. I picked up my phone and redialed the last number that had been called. A young voice answered and I said, “Hi, Jordan just used my phone to call and I wanted to make sure she got home okay.” “This is Jordan, yea, I am here, I am actually on the other line with my friend Tara right now.” “Okay,” I told her, “I just wanted to make sure you got home all right…”
Convertibles and Dogs
March 18th, 2009
I had just finished rollerblading and was sitting on the trunk of my car, observing and enjoying the weather at the park today when the car a couple spaces down slowly backed out. I had been paying more attention to the people in the space directly across from me, two average looking women in jogging pants with three little ones in tow. They were performing the whole show of getting all the kids out of the car, adjusting the stroller, and making sure you have all the necessities for a day at the park with the kids. Anyway, I hadn’t noticed the slick maroon convertible pulling out of the space two down from my own until the little boy, maybe three years old at the most, pointed it out. “Look at that cool car!” … “And there’s a dog in it!” “There is a DOG in that car! He looks really big. Very, very big. There is a DOG in that car! A dog in that car!” The excitement of seeing something new, something you have never seen before. Something so crazy as a dog in a car. I enjoyed how quickly the “cool” car lost the boy’s interest to the idea of a dog in a car.
Leo
March 13th, 2009
excerpt from The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
My heart is weak and unreliable. When I go it will be my heart. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact, I direct it elsewhere. My gut for example, or my lungs, which might seize up for a moment but have never yet failed to take another breath. When I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of myself, or I’m at the bus stop and some kids come up behind me and say, Who smells shit? – small daily humiliations – these I take, generally speaking, in my liver. Other damages I take in other places. The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that’s been lost. It’s true that there’s so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised how much it can take, all I feel is a quick sharp pain and then it’s over. Sometimes I imagine my own autopsy. Disappointment in myself: right kidney. Disappointment of others in me: left kidney. Personal failures: kishkes. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’ve made a science of it. It’s not that well thought out. I take it where it comes. It’s just that I notice certain patterns. When the clocks are turned back and the dark falls before I’m ready, this, for reasons I cant explain, I feel in my wrists. And when I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. The field where we used to play, the field in which everything was discovered and everything was possible. (We ran so hard we thought we would spit blood: to me that is the sound of childhood, heavy breathing and shoes scraping the hard earth.) Stiffness of the fingers is the dream of childhood as it’s been returned to me at the end of my life. I have to run them under the hot water, steam clouding the mirror, outside the rustle of pigeons. Yesterday I saw a man kicking a dog and I felt it behind my eyes. I don’t know what to call this, a place before tears. The pain of forgetting: spine. The pain of remembering: spine. All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist: my knees, it takes half a tube of Ben-Gay and a big production just to bend them. To everything a season, to every time I’ve woken only to make the mistake of believing for a moment that someone was sleeping beside me: a hemorrhoid. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.
Stuffed
March 11th, 2009
I got out of my car and began walking towards the bookstore entrance. I paused a moment while walking through the parking lot as a green SUV crossed my path. I had to do a double take. Out of the passenger side window was an over-sized stuffed dog looking back at me. His eyes conveyed sadness and happiness at the same time. When I glanced back the second time I observed every detail of the situation. I thought maybe a child was in the front seat with the dog on his or her lap. But no. This furry, silky, floppy-eared dog was in a sitting position in the front seat – the only companion to the driver in the vehicle. He even had his seat-belt on. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself as I finished crossing the parking lot and stepped up on the walkway, making my way towards the entrance doors.