my mother has god(dess?)like levels of energy…  she has been burning through days emptying out of the giant old store to a much more modest-sized store, and now she’s starting to set up shop.  went there today for the first time to work for a few hours, and it is complete chaos.  stuff EVERYWHERE.  and there she is, just doing whatever’s in front of her, and then moves onto the next thing.  doesn’t stop.  a lot more productive than when i just sit there and get too overwhelmed to do anything.  in this sense, my mom’s characteristic of not being able to see the big picture works for her.

after working from 9-10:30 pm, she’s home and fussing around the house, cleaning and cooking food to bring to work tomorrow.  broccoli rabe sauteed with beef, soy sauce and garlic.  was completely full (my sister and i made pasta with spicy italian turkey sausage and tomato sauce earlier, mmm, and i also had had ~100 cuties clementine oranges and lots of flamin’ hot cheetos puffs and poore’s brothers potato chips) but after about 10 seconds of prodding, succumbed and had a small bowl with rice.  delicious!  mmmm i love food.

also, while she was cooking, i read to her an “o” magazine article about top 20 superfoods (i don’t get why another one, since 95% of every similar article has the same foods listed).  but this list had turmeric, which is revealed to have “anti-inflammatory properties”.  which made me flash to a couple of years ago when my mother would rub this bright orange, curry-smelling root all over my face, claiming that it would heal any acne and improve my skin.  i remember just standing in front of a mirror with my orange, strongly-smelling face, staring before finally sighing and going to bed (with an old, ratty pillowcase to catch any staining).  of course i thought she was psychotic at the time, but apparently, that time, there was a method to her madness.

batch of freshly-fried chả giò

when you get mad, the only person really losing anything is yourself.

follow nature’s lead – don’t stress or resist, just be and grow and flow.

don’t worry about the ripples ontop of your lake, think about the vast, deep, still waters underneath.

i wondered about how journalling fits on a “journey to enlightenment” since identifying with your mind, thoughts, words, etc. seems so discouraged, but i suppose it offers a grounds on which to better identify, examine and be aware of your trains of thought and the mental spiralling traps your mind may create.

it is very difficult to read “the power of now” in bed and try to concentrate when babbling idiots outside my apartment wall keep yapping (it’s 2 am). i wonder if this is how beginner monks must feel everywhere they go!

the phrase “trains of thought” made me think of my mind being a train station – with all these trains (of thought…) sitting there and eventually taking off to other destinations, but the station still there. like my thoughts might come and go, but me, my heart/soul/”being”/whatever, will remain.

“As the oyster grows in size, its shell must also grow. The mantle is an organ that produces the oyster’s shell, using minerals from the oyster’s food. The material created by the mantle is called nacre. Nacre lines the inside of the shell.

The formation of a natural pearl begins when a foreign substance slips into the oyster between the mantle and the shell, which irritate s the mantle. It’s kind of like the oyster getting a splinter. The oyster’s natural reaction is to cover up that irritant to protect itself. The man tle covers the irritant with layers of the same nacre substance that is used to create the shell. This eventually forms a pearl.

So a pearl is a foreign substance covered with layers of nacre. Most pearls that we see in jewelry stores are nicely rounded objects, which are the most valuable ones. Not all pearls turn out so well. Some pearls form in an uneven shape — these are called baroque pearls. Pearls, as you’ve probably noticed, come in a variety of various colors, including white, black, gray, red, blue and green. Most pearls can be found all over the world, but black pearls are indigenous to the South Pacific.”

- http://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/question630.htm

as i grow older, i increasingly begin to find myself losing the meaning and lessons of the books i read, art i see and movies i watch.  which is sad, because what is the point then?  it’s the same as if i never read or saw them in the first place.  though  i know that the lessons and impressions still linger in you as every little thing you encounter must irrevocably change you at least a smidgen somehow, i don’t know…sometimes when i say, “oh yeah!  i read/saw that,” i sometimes feel like i’m almost lying or something, because i’ll suddenly feel this slight panic at the thought of them maybe asking me anything about it and me having nothing to say.

so, in realizing all this, i will make more of a conscious effort to write at least one little blurb of things i watch/read/see. (also: this realization has also made me retroactively appreciate more my elementary and high school teachers’ pushing of book reports, art analysis essays and movie critiques.)

first off: the movie “phoebe in wonderland”.

it was a lazy saturday yesterday, and instead of doing things i needed to do, i decided instead to watch a movie by myself.  this one drew me in because of its fantastical nature – i feel like i need a little magic in my life, especially so since it was halloween.  the movie is about this bright young girl named phoebe (elle fanning) who, to escape the rule-obsessed world around her, retreats into a fantasy world populated with images and characters from “alice in wonderland”.  though it was a beautiful and enchanting movie of childhood imagination and magic, it also dealt with serious themes of parenting, growth and acceptance.  during the movie, it is revealed that phoebe might be developing some kind of mental disorder that makes her say and do things she knows she shouldn’t do.  this burden she carries isolates her from her carefree classmates and pushes her into numerous clashes with her teachers and school principal.  phoebe’s mother (felicity huffman) struggles in trying to support her daughter’s difficult nature, feeling like a failure as a mother in addition to as a writer, having given up her career to care for phoebe and her sister.  however, phoebe finds comfort and security in being part of the school production of “alice in wonderland”, finding a friend in the very perceptive drama teacher who tells her,

“at a certain part in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by, you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are.  especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals.  and you will say to yourself, “but I am this person.” and in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love.”

excerpt from eat pray love by elizabeth gilbert:

“Imagine the universe is a great spinning engine,” he said.  “You want to stay near the core of the thing – right in the hub of the wheel – not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes places, where you can get frayed and crazy.  The hub of calmness – that’s your heart.  That’s where God lives within you.  So stop looking for answers in the world.  Just keep coming back to that center and you’ll always find peace.”

today i was frying up some bánh chưng (one of my favorite vietnamese foods, and a very traditional one) for breakfast, and it struck me how strange it was that it was highly probable that i could be having the same meal as farm children in rural vietnam.  and here i am, in my bright and shiny college apartment, unwrapping the banana leaves, heating it up in my bright and shiny frying pan.  and it’s the same thing!!  the same food!!

“Bánh chưng is a traditional Vietnamese rice cake which was consumed by warriors on the battlefields thousands of years ago owing to it being conveniently wrapped and preserved.”

why i think it’s necessary or appropriate to have a solo dance party to beyonce instead of studying for my unstudied-for, impending virology exam at 3:00 pm today is beyond me.

“i need to make my bones.”