Sarah Kay

If I should have a daughter, instead of Mom, she's gonna call me Point B
Because that way she knows that no matter what happens,
at least she can always find her way to me

And I'm gonna paint the solar system on the backs of her hands
So she has to learn the entire universe before she could say:
Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.
And she's gonna learn, that this life will hit you, hard, in the face,
wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach
But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs
How much they like the taste of air

There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band aids or poetry,
so the first time she realizes that wonder woman isn't coming,
I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself
'Cause no matter how wide you stretch your fingers,
your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal
Believe me, I've tried

And, baby, I'll tell her, don't keep your nose up in the air like that
I know that trick, I've done it a million times
You're just smelling for smoke
So you can follow the trail back to a burning house
So you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him
Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place,
to see if you can change him
But I know she will anyway, so instead,
I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby,
because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix
Okay, there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix
But that's what the rain boots are for,
because rain will wash away everything if you let it

I want her to look at the world through the under side of a glass bottom boat
To look through a microscope at the galaxies
That exist on the pinpoint of a human mind
Because, that's the way my mom taught me
That there'll be days like this, there'll be days like this, my momma said
When you open your hands to catch
And wind up with only blisters and bruises
When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly
And the very people you wanna safe are the ones standing on your cape
When your boots will fill with rain and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say "Thank you"
Cause there's nothing more beautiful
Than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline
No matter how many times it's sent away

You will put the wind, in the win some, lose some
You will put the star, and starting over, and over.
And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute,
be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life

And yes, on the scale from one to over trusting, I am pretty damn naive
But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar
It can crumble so easily
But don't be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it

Baby, I'll tell her, remember your Mama is a worrier and you papa is a warrior,
And you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more Remember that good things come in threes, and so do bad things
And always apologize when you've done something wrong
But don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining
Your voice is small, but don't ever stop singing

And when they finally hand you heartache
And when they slip war and hatred under your door
And they offer you handouts on street corners, of cynicism and defeat
You tell them that they really ought to meet your mother

By: Sarah Kay

Despite of Me

I woke up snoozing as I wanted
Skipped a bath, and did faces to look awake
I missed breakfast and snacked the whole way
Me and my frazzled hair, somehow still survive the day

I glanced at the piled up laundry and dishes
That awaits patiently as I made up excuses
A thousand and one and a thousand more
Until I ran out of socks and had to buy some more

I sang loudly out of tune
A song of life not fully understood
I danced awkwardly not counting the beat
I danced on raging winds and unnamed streets

Sometimes I just don't get
How you love me despite of me
In spite of mismatches and rebelling heart
My imperfections, do you not see?

I sit quietly beside a waterfall
The unsettled rapids, impatient streams
The angry, foaming, and fallen drops
Behold, a magnificent beauty
That would finally be still
And reach the open sea

Create Your Space

Boy: We're starting a football team. We're going to be world champions!

Old man: Hahaha, look around you, look where you live!

Boy: We realize they were right, we had nowhere to play or even practise.
We had ourselves a football team, but we didn't have a pitch. This was a real problem because where we live, space wasn't something we had.

Boy: We figured, we'd have to create our own space.

Make You Feel My Love

Cranes

Walked for a little bit around campus today and stopped by to make a crane as a symbol of support for the people in Japan.

After Fat Tuesday

I can't believe that Lent is already here. It's March 2011!!!! Yesterday night, the evening of Fat Tuesday, I started scrambling my thoughts to find things to give up this Lent. I did not resort to google this time, but I did consult lifeteen.com for suggestion. Yes, I still consider myself teenager at heart. Part of me feel like I am afraid to make promises, saying that I will give up facebook, or I will refrain from meat, etc. I am afraid of not being able to keep them or not being able to achieve the ultimate goal of scooching over to be nearer to God's side by doing all that. I am afraid that I will still feel empty when Easter comes and treat the day as just another Sunday. Maybe, in short, I am afraid of failing.

I remember a year ago, I was talking to a friend who happened to be a Christian, and I told him, you know, I just feel far from God. And he looked at me and asked, are you putting in the time to pray or read about Him or do a quiet time? And in embarrassment I had to admit that I did not really. I come to Him at times of need, like Alladin rubbing his genie lamp. I read relevant books to help me reorganize my spiritual life, but those books are not useful just to be read by itself. They have to be treated like cookbooks, filled with direction, and will only be fruitful when I actually and finally get into the kitchen and... cook. In relation to that, I once read about a person's encounter with Mother Teresa. At the meeting, he explained to Mother Teresa how he was in a complicated situation and he did not know how to get out of it or how to handle it. He was hoping that he would get enlightened by the suggestions from this little saintly woman with wrinkles of wisdom. So at the end of his lengthy story, he asked, "What should I do?" Mother Theresa only said a sentence to him: Pray an hour a day, and you will be fine. In other words, we should just implement what is said to be the "Philosophy of Showering". You don't think about how, you don't consult on the methodology, you don't try to find the Hebrew word for "shower", you don't ponder about warm or cold water, or calculate the angle of water drops, or think about how you would feel after the shower. All you know is that there's water and you bathe. The more you wait, the more you stink. The more you stink, the more depressed you get.

So, I think about that and I think about how promises work. Let's say you get married and in front of God, the pastor and all loved ones, you say: "I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life". As you say that, you truthfully know that it is just NOT possible, right? "To be true to you" means you do not lie or hold grudge, and "to love and honor you" means you will not be disrespectful or hide anything or do any sin to you spouse. "All the days of my life"...... we all should have cold feet before going to the altar. Impossible, but we say it anyway. Or when you decide to have a child. Conscious or not, we make a promise of raising him/her, providing shelter, education, moral support, and all that. You enter the labor room at 26 years old and come out with a baby. Do you know that you can actually fulfill all those things? Not really, but we have children anyways. The point is, I think, that's just how human promises work. It does not mean that we will perfectly abide and deliver that promises that we state, but we give our commitment to come back to them every time we falter. If I slipped and left my spouse in sickness, I will come back the next day and try again. If my son ended up doing drugs, well, I'm not sure what to do, but perhaps work more to improve my parenting? It works differently from they way God promises us things, where they definitely will happen. When we promise, I don't think it is in our power and nature to ensure it will always be fulfilled, but we are committed towards what we say. That, we can do.

Having thought all that, I feel better facing this Lent. And it's probably not good either to be so afraid of failing that I would not even promise at all. That's like failing before I even start. So, back to the ultimate question: what am I giving up this season? Hmm... good question... I am promising (still feels the shudders using this word) to be discipline. Very vague, I know. But for starters, that means:

1. Not pressing the snooze button in the morning.

2. Refraining from facebook.

Through my journey with that I will add more based on the success rate. And I realize that it will not be a personal achievement when in the end I am able to control myself, because ultimately the beautiful achievement is only when I am closer to God and celebrate Easter with all my heart.

Alrighty, gotta go get my ashes and go shower after that!

To all who are celebrating, happy Ash Wednesday. Through successes and failures, we pray for each other and we lean on Him.

Weekend Visitors

Last weekend was probably the worst snow this season yet, but it was a fun weekend for me :) I got a visit from Hanfung and Jeffrey who brought a fresh breeze of air from New Jersey and Georgia along with them, making me feel as if I got a visit from home. We did not do much in terms of the activities because in the morning we are supposed to go skiing Jeff got a bad stomach ache from too much coconut milk in the curry he ate for dinner. The next day was when the storm started brewing in. So after trying to find lunch at Moosewood, which apparently did not open for lunch on a Sunday, we went back home forced to settle to order a Domino's pizza which to our stomachs' disappointment came 2 hours later due to the snow. But we got some quality time, talking over random stuff, catching up with each other, spending time in the library to do work, where Hanfung found a gem of Indo literature/historical sources, came back to me beaming as ever with 4 books to borrow. We also went to Indo night, where my guests became part-time volunteers, helping out with tumpeng set up, taking down banners, and other errands. Such expensive outsourced labor :)

Anyways, thanks guys for coming over, you totally made my weekend!

Camwhoring after Indo night in my room

Looking over the snow storm that left knee-deep piles of snow the next morning

Glad to have help with cleaning up snow from the car and shoveling the way out

Finally, got a chance to take Jeff to Moosewood, the vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca with varying daily menu depending on what's in season. He got 2 beans gumbo with corn bread and surprisingly they had gado-gado as a new recipe, so I tried it. Well, it was the most expensive gado-gado I've ever tried, as well as the least original :) They put in carrots, broccoli, tofu, red bell peppers, on a bed of brown rice, topped with their version of peanut sauce which I suspect is made out of cream and peanut butter. It's safe to say that it truly was NOT gado-gado, but you know, it could pass for like a fusion food, and it tasted fine.

Thanks again, guys. Good luck to you, Jeff, where ever you end up living at. You will do great things with that sharp mind of yours :)