is that comma taken?

I'm a comma person, no, not COMA, but commas. They give me pause, and they let me think, almost as if there's something magical about the way the concave punctuation mark shifts and sifts, not really turning its back on the rest of the thought or sentence, but giving room to say, yes, think of this first, then the other follows. The comma gathers and shields, yet separates like a sieve or a levee, although it never really marginalizes as much as the period or the semicolon. The comma doesn't intrude as much and isn't as showy as the exclamation point, and it isn't indecisive like the question mark.

I use lots of commas in my writing, and especially in my poetry, especially in catalogs. Some folks think its b/c I'm trying a gimmick, but it isn't, really. It's just, well, the method I use to give way to other thoughts, to lead them in, like guiding successive ideas and phrases to come out one by one.

Or, it's because my teachers didn't teach me how to use punctuation marks.

Things I should have blogged about recently but didn't:

* Going to see Mendelssohn's violin concerta at Davies Symphony Hall and listening to Charles Ives Holidays pieces

* Brilliance of Sergey Khachatryan's violin skills. The 22 y.o. is incredibly gifted -- more talent in his little pinkie... etc, etc, etc...

* Reconnecting w/ long-lost friends. Overly inquisitive friends with slightly disconnected buddies

* Relatives exhibiting different cases of illness: glaucoma (real) vs. craziness (imagined)

* Crazy aunts (aforementioned imagined illness)

* Bowling, cracked bowling balls, size 5 shoes, and how it all reminds me of Kim Oja!

* Free tickets to Berkeley Repertory Theater and Argonautika

* Thanksgiving

* Poetry/visual art installation (it's really happening!!)

have I already told you?

It's 2:36 a.m. Friday morning, and I realize that Thanksgiving Day went by without me ever having the chance to check my blog to write a "thank you" to the world. And then it hits me that, well, that's good. I spent time with real live people and gave open thanks and counted my blessings in the presence of friends, not in virtual space, and that's not so bad after all.

I am grateful for the friends who have texted messages or called or emailed or whatever. And I am hopeful I have been diligent throughout the year in telling you that you are called FRIEND, and that your presence is felt -- whether near or far. I hope I have given thanks enough and have expressed my gratitude enough on every non-thanksgiving day. I hope you have experienced my friendship and adoration and gratefulness, and can call me friend, daughter, sibling, niece, granddaughter, teacher, confidente, and coworker, with much joy. For it is with joy that I call you friend.

shitty blog posts

Ever since t. issued his challenge, I've been browsing through my most recent posts with a fine-toothed comb, searching for the occasional fuck or damn or shit or anything, some sort of verbiage that even hinted of more hardcore content, of something with more sass, with more gravitas. I have not found any. I've been sissified by mr. t. He's called me on it, and there's no denying it because if you've read the entries that have been written on the blog from the inaugural post to this one (if you're still reading, I'm incredulous), this here is some bad shit. But fuck it, I say, because I'm writing what I want. Sorry, T. This is what I have to offer, and it sure as hell sucks, but what more can I give?

My life is about white rice and bland persimmons and boring church meetings and repetitive administrative tasks. I'm pretty mediocre. Nothing stands out, and so, what I produce, well, it's quite unimpressive.

Wait one fucking minute, though. Maybe it's not that my life is boring as hell but because I'm just a shitty writer. Maybe I just have nothing but "slices of life" that make people want to jab letter openers through their eyes after reading, and maybe which will make Norman Mailer roll over in his grave, if he hasn't done it already. I'm the producer of stale blog posts that Mel might want to throw to the shitz and that T wants to dump in the trash.

Sorry, world, this is it.

persimmon theory

After church on Sunday, we had an early Thanksgiving lunch. A group of us were sitting around a table, and somehow the conversation turns to the persimmon. No one else likes the beautiful orange persimmon, so I'm the only one with a persimmon on my plate. It tastes too bland, someone says. In fact a lot of people I know don't enjoy persimmons (hard or soft); they say it has no flavor and has a strange texture.

No matter what people say, though, I love, love, LOVE this fruit. The ripe orange color, the sweetness, the cute size. When you hold a Japanese persimmon in your hand, it fits perfectly -- a deep, rich globe of sweet flavors just resting in your palms. (Is anyone else thinking of Li-Young Lee's poem?)

My friend over at the Daily-M has this persimmon theory that Asian Americans who are born outside the U.S. like persimmons and those born in the U.S. don't.

I find this off the cuff theory quite interesting. Simply put, persimmons and other tropical fruits such as dragon-fruits, soursops, longans, lychees, etc., are grown in tropical regions, and we don't get them often in the U.S. So if you grow up with bananas and oranges, then you'll find a persimmon too different. If you don't grow up eating grapes (which you don't when you're in Vietnam), then grapes on vines are quite spectacular.

However, if we give it any sort of credence at all, the persimmon theory forces us to reconsider certain things: What does it say about identity, and what does it tell us about how we define our identity? How else am I different and individual? In what ways do I identify with other Asia-born Americans? In what ways am I different from my American-born Asians?

You can rename it, too. Fish-sauce Theory. Mam Ruoc Theory. All those names are about the same thing. What would I eat or not eat, depending on where I was born and raised. Would I eat fish sauce? A lot of my Vietnamese friends (in VN) thought that I could not eat fish sauce, because they assumed that growing up in America, I would find it disgusting. The same goes with mam ruoc theory (but to the 10th degree, b/c the taste and smell is 10 times as pungent).

I like to break boundaries. Maybe just throw in a wrench here or there to spice things up. I want to up-end these theories and assumptions and say it's not so easy to create a formula. A + B does not necessarily equal C. Just because I grew up in the US doesn't mean I don't cook with fish sauce and eat spring rolls with fish sauce and douse my rice (too much!) with fish sauce.

And, maybe, I just love, love, love, persimmon. Or, I just eat too much. I have no discriminating tastes, in fact. I eat everything. (Except beans.)