fortunate
disclosure: this household has consumed copious amounts of Chinese take-out – pandemic or not. with two fantastic Chinese restaurants on our block, it’s hard to resist. Chinese food is comforting, and this last year has seen an exponential increase in need for comfort.
dozens of sweet-and-sour chicken, steamed dumpling, Mongolian beef, and veggie orders later we’ve simultaneously increased our fortune cookie consumption. naturally, i’ve collected the fortunes once dispensed from their snappy cookie shells and saved them in a little box on our kitchen counter. a lot of them are corny, on par with Snapple cap facts and Laffy Taffy jokes. others are egregiously ill suited for the medium (identified below), and several deliveries felt fated – truly fortunate.
for months they’ve sat in their little box on the counter, with a few exceptions that have been pinned and pasted around the apartment. can’t continue to keep them to myself, because with great cookie fortunes comes great responsibility.
easier said than done, but well stated.
yippee-ki-yay.
wow, where to begin… this fortune cookie advice column is punching above its weight here. perhaps these topics require more nuance than a narrow strip of paper jammed inside a cookie can handle?
got it. procrastination is double homicide; unless opportunities are curiosity, which cannot be killed.
;-)
wait… what?
well i’ll be damned.
i’ve been sitting on these fortunes for a while, true; but it would be tone-deaf not to address the racism, misogyny, and violence that the Asian-Americna community has faced, especially this last year as fueled by 45’s racist framing of COVID-19.
it has been upsetting to see community elders attacked and in fear of their safety; and the shooting in Atlanta last week where a racist coward targeted Asian women and murdered 8 people is a heartbreaking tragedy. can journalists and news outlets stop humanizing mass murderers? please?
i was nervousy writing about this here, but i know from experience that silence is more harmful. i stand in full support of and as an accomplice to the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and will lend my voice in any way possible to amplify demands for justice.
“caret navigation”
i’d been thinking about making a “search bar” journal cover for a while. it was another straightforward idea and workflow, so why not? i had imagined trying an 8-bit style, but knew that would take some time. i wanted to make something quick-and-dirty for proof of concept, it didn’t need to be perfect or the only version. the primary requirement was that it live outside of my head.
looked at a couple examples to start: Google, iTunes, Chrome, etcetera and the like. most of the search bars were rounded, either with half circles at each end or filleted corners. most had a magnifying glass icon, and several had “search” faintly written in the bar prior to typing. i like that approach: using graphics and text to signify use.
what i didn’t know was what the blinking text cursor was called. i was sure it had a name. if there was design or engineering involved it had to be called something.
this is exactly the sort of question i’d be too bashful to ask out loud in certain company. it isn’t elegant, but it’s what i could think of to get where i needed to go. i typed my question into Google and bam: turns out, it’s called “caret navigation”. asked and answered.
not far below the highlighted Wikipedia answer was a link to a blog whose author was also curious about cursors. i clicked through and was pleasantly surprised to find a “blog blog” — the old school kind with minimal formatting. i read the post about cursors and a few others. turns out the author, Paul, has several blogs in addition to the self deprecatingly eponymous one i had clicked on. some dedicated to niche interests like flipping the bird to routine inconveniences of life such as COVID-19 spam emails or cooking lasagna. i like his writing, but not all of it was to my taste — and that’s fine. for me, that wasn’t the point… *
in many cases when i’ve searched Google and clicked through to a suggested link the results have been severely underwhelming. it was serendipitous to find a human voice in the din of corporate jargon and sponsored content. i was excited to stumble across someone else’s reflections in the process of documenting my own and seeing where our curiosities overlapped.
*growing up in the states and on the internet, and given the current state of the world, i have come to expect horrific things from white men online. i read the posts with some tension, anticipating super offensive stuff. nothing found, also not digging too deep. just thought that was important context to keep in mind.
started cutting my hair today, and now it’s short. shorter than i was going for originally, i can say that for sure. “just a little bit” went in one ear and out the other. so far, i’ve shaped the sides and trimmed my bangs. now i need help with the back. i’m waiting for the work day to end so Sam can give me a hand. this isn’t my first rodeo at the DIY haircut corral, but it is the first time i’ve cut my own hair from shoulder length. glad it’s curly. relying heavily on the texture to hide any mistakes…
today’s writing was an exercise in processing some of the tangential moments that happen when i’m working, and oh are there tangents! i had started writing this last week, but took a break to give myself room to breathe through some other things. it was also in an effort to distract myself from returning to my “home salon” before i can get some assistance. i even gave the shears to Sam to hide — i can’t stop!
i’m doing my very best to remind myself that the mullet i have right now is temporary, and that it’ll be ok if my hair doesn’t turn out perfectly (i’m not a professional, it’s sort of a given that it won’t be). i just don’t want it to be totally f--ked up… ugh. *fingers crossed*
(p.s. the escape key in draft mode gets rid of all edits. try not to remember that the hard way… again.)
Pokey
dropped off a typewriter to get fixed the other day. after some chit-chat with the typewriter repairman, i set out to road-test the mixtape i’ve been working on. i like doing that — driving and listening to mixtapes-in-progress — before putting my pencil down. i hadn’t planned on going driving, but plans change. i headed down a familiar avenue and took it farther than i have before. several towns from home i realized i was heading toward an antique store i like and charted a course.
the shop is small with stalls arranged thematically, and an entire corner filled with toys. on my first visit i spent a bit of time in the toy corner and found a posable, rubbery Pokey figure just like the one i had as a kid. i wanted to get it then, but resisted on account of my penchant for collecting. on every visit since then i’d play a game: check the toy shelves for Pokey, leave him there for next time. this Pokey wasn’t in great condition, or particularly collectible; but he was recognizable, familiar. i looked forward to searching for Pokey just as much as i did combing through the bric-a-brac.
last time i stopped in i noticed that the shop was downsizing. one of the two back rooms that usually showcased larger pieces had been closed off. i was seeing that Pokey wasn’t the only thing that could disappear on the next visit — it could be the whole store. queue the world’s tiniest violin please…
i decided to buy the Pokey toy before i even pulled into the lot. i regretted not buying it last time and didn’t want to pass up the opportunity. (also, there were a couple brochures i had seen that would make great collage material. two birds, really.)
i walked in, said a quick “hello” to the gentleman arranging items in stalls and headed straight to the toy shelves where Pokey was, right where i saw him last. i pulled Pokey from a clutter of toys, grabbed the brochures and excitedly chirped my Pokey story to the same gentleman as before who was now ringing me up. he obligingly replied, “oh, yeah?” unsurprisingly, he wasn’t as humored to hear my story as i had been to tell it. can’t win ‘em all.
i finished listening to the mixtape on the drive home. i’m happy with it. it tells the story i need it to, for me. it is finally done, and Pokey is finally my pony.
the mixtape making process is a whole other thing. i had tried writing it along with my Pokey story, but it was proving quite challenging. i thought it could be the character building kind of challenge, but it was getting confusing and i kept generalizing important details. when i read back what i wrote, i feel as thought it was written for someone else. not helpful, and more disorienting.
i need space to reflect and clearly articulate some complicated feelings. feelings around processing relationships and memory. i want to give myself room to move and breathe before unleashing it to this space and the internet time capsule.
also, i want to dispatch another note-to-self: this is for you - write for your own self-reflection. what is it that you need from this? write to describe your process so that you may better understand how you move through the world. you got this…