a morning drive through bavaria

September 9, 2018; Bad Kohlrub to Munich, Germany.

rocket summer

In June of 2012 we graduated with our bachelor of architecture degrees. We both stayed in town that summer. Zach worked as a studio instructor for the high school architecture program while I stuck around because I didn’t have anyplace else to be and I was paying dirt-cheap rent to live in a little green house across the train tracks with a good friend who I’d loved then lost then found again and in that house we danced a lot, watched movies in our backyard a lot, we drank and cooked and it was always warm and the sun was always out and of course I knew how fleeting and singular those days were but I also knew that stopping to recognize it would send me into deep sadness. So I stayed blissfully floating at the surface of it all. When I wasn’t in San Luis Obispo I’d drive to and from Los Angeles and Orange County and back again almost at whim, sometimes starting the four-hour drive at 10pm, and I’d grow to greet that stretch of the 101 like an old friend. My sister came to visit, or really to move away from Okinawa, and we flew to Seattle for her college orientation, and then back to Los Angeles where she saw Art Center and Silverlake and loved Brita because she’d pack a bag of apple slices with lemon juice drizzled on top. We swam in the ocean. We hiked up small mountains. I’d go driving through the Hollywood Hills with a best friend, all the lazy roads crossing Mulholland, and during one of those drives he said that my life was a very long picnic.

Knowing Better

I have never really thought I can write. At times, when isolated in a fragile bubble of naive blissfulness, I have thought that what was penned by my own hand was worth reading by others. But those bubbles have been popped or beliefs otherwise dispelled in that exact moment when indeed they reached a world beyond my own.

My mom would tell me about how, as a young girl, everyone told her she couldn’t sing. Despite this being a passion of hers, she allowed the echoes of others to ring out and quiet any notions of pursuing it further. The happy ending to that story was she decided, after many years had passed, to turn to her better angels and recognize what was fed to her as a child and onward was false, that she could and ought to sing, and that with hard work and study she could and did make music the focus of her life.

Any parallels to my own life and attempts at writing end after the first part of this parable. Writing is not the way in which I make sense of the world, nor a passion I am destined to pursue. Writing is rather an ability I wish I had, wanting for wistfully like a superpower. If only I could fly and compose eloquently the thoughts otherwise strewn about my mind. And while I can and do, to a certain extent, write for no one other than myself to read, it would be nice to use writing as it was really meant to be used: to communicate.

The problem, however, is that whenever I do feel like venturing beyond diary entries or email responses, the desire is often quelled by either the knowledge given by others that I can’t do so well or the personal discouragement felt after reading my own poorly written diatribes or wishfully poetic musings (this is happening right now, for example).

I have a similar feeling, in fact, when it comes to photography. Perhaps this is true with all forms of creative making outside of the professional one I was trained to perform. (Is it really creative?) But I nevertheless have thoughts and take photos and don’t know otherwise what to do with either. So it seems that no matter the size of the pot nor the weight of its lid, there is always a boiling-over point, a time at which, despite knowing better, one must do. Forgive me.

pilgrim souls

You’re reading this because I needed you to find it. Years ago we promised we’d always love each other, so that wasn’t at stake anymore, I knew it the way I did in those early days, and I know he knows it too. What happened on June 21 was for them: a ceremony of family promises and thanksgiving. It was a time to tell them we recognize the sacrifices they made for us, and a time to celebrate the enduring support they’ve given us throughout our whole lives, as individuals and as a couple. And it was an announcement that we were ready to give back to them too.

But I missed you. I missed you who have loved us, cheered for us, laughed with us, you who have truly seen us, cried with us, dreamt with us, you who have loved our pilgrim souls from the very first light. I did not expect your absence to make me ache this way. I miss the time we shared. I miss the person you saw in me. And I miss you still. And I love you too.

November 21, 2018; Rome, Italy

it was winter everywhere else

Late November 2015; Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki, New Zealand. We were alone, the sky and the sun and just us, a million sheep and long roads and just us. Back home everyone we loved prepared for another winter but we skipped it that year, and for a few months everything was the shade of blue you only see when the bright and unobstructed sun bleaches it without apology. We learned lupins were weeds, an invasive species that nonetheless lined highways with bursts of color every few meters.

the day he left

November 3, 2018; Cambridge, MA

February 18, 2018; Seattle, WA

February 3, 2015; Port Chalmers, Dunedin, New Zealand