The Melting World

He used the red “walker” for a while until he got used to the idea–he’s at the Depot, an indoor rink that was once a train station and has a zamboni shaped like a steam engine. What’s not to love, then, T-chan must wonder. Now he begging me to buy him skates and he wants […]

I switched the furnace on yesterday morning, though by midday we were in T-shirts. That was me running and my son kicking his scooter down the greenway that stretches for miles alongside a cemetery called Sunset. We were flying, suspended, hovering, above the pine tree tops, between summer and fall. You could say it like […]

Updated view of our garden, now run amok, taken by husband, with me stuck in the middle. Yellow zucchini, Japanese cucumbers, green beans, sweet peas, basil, daikon radish, purple radish, cilantro, and roma tomatoes–not yet bright red though, all bursting out and over the fence. We also discovered a pumpkin under some big leaves creeping […]

Finally after untold minutes and untold attempts, listening to machines tell me that “due to the high volume of calls”, etc. I have my password back and could today enter this new world (over 3 months later). This blog was shifted to a new platform–I don’t know how to use it yet–but nonetheless–it feels good […]

This picture has nothing to do with the below message, and yet everything to do with it. I leave you to discover the connection. The sun finally broke through the thick cloud cover we who are trapped in Minnesota had been suffering under for what seems like months. Yes~~! Yesterday, however, I spent the afternoon […]

Well, as many of you know, we uprooted ourselves three weeks earlier than anticipated due to my good luck in finding a job at my alma mater as an academic advisor. More later when I get a chance to breathe, but for now I’ll say I am enjoying the overall experience of returning to Minnesota […]

–An injured horse flees the US bombing of Baghdad– (Image taken from here) I was asked about six months ago how I can be an anti-war idealist in light of what horrible things happen in our world. I was asked how I can say, for example, that war is wrong, when it was the way […]

“If you zoom in too close, a spiral appears to be a line…” I’ve said this before, and now I realize it’s my life. The ties you think should have been broken or at least disintegrated after so long an absence hold firm. The prodigal daughter takes a road that ends up where she began. […]

Out back of our dilapidated public housing is an unkempt field of beauty. A sturdy pine tree, in its classic Christmas shape, stands near to where a house used to be long ago. Dragon willow trees spring and curl up tenaciously even though the city workers mow them down, and now patches of daffodils and […]

He started going here from this week. Now each morning he is waiting by the door with his shoes in hand, eager to go to school! What a joy to take him to such a place each morning. We have been blessed by the misty autumn morning beauty of Hokkaido all week.

View from son’s new school

Now that I finally have breathing space (2 weeks) before outside work and academic duties return in gale force, I find myself wandering about from place to place via the Internet, from idea to idea, without any one focus. Is this what happens when a dog is suddenly unleashed and de-collared after being tied up […]

Just a quick message to say that the new job at M. University didn’t pan out, but I sensed it wasn’t the right place when I visited–I mean–my ideals perfectly matched the university’s ideals; yet the realities of the place contradicted our ideals. Make sense? In other words, the university was more closed and conservative […]

In my current class, Cultural and New Media Studies, we have begun to explore the theoretical frameworks people tend to use when they discuss the relationships or the collision-intertwining of humans and technologies. It is all quite overwhelming and academic and so, from my class notes, and my own interpretations, I wanted to sound out […]

Well, okay, okay it did snow yesterday I admit it, but the optimist in me must focus on the fact that the tree outside my office window is sprouting teeny weeny leaves. And okay, okay, I am still wearing a hat and wool trousers every day, but the grass has turned into a courageous green […]

Below the plane a silver plate begs for coins of constellations, enough to buy feed for the night mare to ride into the forest of glistening eyes and sharpened claws. With blind mutt’s eye, a lake searches its owner by scent and sound. There she is! Wrapped in riveted armor and hidden in ocean-rage boom. […]

We just returned from a short stay in Kaua’i and now back among the snow tunnels and crisp blue skies of Hokkaido. The relentless roar of the ocean, the lush variation of tropical greens, the smell of citronella candles and the taste of fresh coconut meat linger inside me and I find it hard to […]

Yesterday my son decided not to take his nap. He lay in bed with his toy car and stayed silent, except for some muttering, for over an hour, without ever falling asleep. I figured the downtime might suffice for a nap…but in the evening he had reached that punch-drunk state of exhaustion, running wildly from […]

It has been a while since I last wrote in this journal: there was glitch at the ubc site, and access was blocked, and, alas, I was also running around in headless chicken mode, so that is another reason for the lapse…. My son and I spent a night in Sapporo this weekend. We took […]