Yesterday was just gorgeous.

Hiked up Diamond Head, feeling breath and blood surging through me.

Ate the perfect breakfast bagel sandwich down Monsarrat at Bogart’s Café: egg, cheese, spinach, tomato, bacon, and mustard on a toasted everything bagel kind of perfect.

Holoholo’ed over the Pali with Mom, Hawaiian music blaring.

Went driving through Kailua town, the clouds heavy with rain, to spend the perfect rainy day afternoon getting fussed over and complimented at Mu’uMu’u Heaven, which seriously may be The Best Store in the Entire World. While I dressed, Tanima and Aerin fluttered around like small, helpful birds. Met the designer/owner Deb, who was just a delight with her skinny jeans and her fedora cocked just so. One third of the store is a dress store; another third a small art gallery; the final third devoted to the home. The home part of the store made me clap my hands together in wonder: it was all cool white walls with vases and bowls organized BY COLOR. It tickled my OCD bone just right. Each dress is one-of-a kind, recycled from vintage fabrics. The cuts are so flattering and the prints so funky. The dresses aren’t exactly cheap, but when I add up the complete experience I had--all the actually helpful help, the iced tea, the boosting of my ego, the one of a kind dress, meeting the designer, the free vintage fabric zip purse, the free vintage fabric tote bag as shopping bag to carry it all away in, and the two chocolate kisses--I’d say I came out ahead.

Then there was last night. Headed to Uncle’s Fish Market and Grill on Pier 38 off Nimitz Highway for sushi and jazz Thursdays. We ate fresh, locally caught fish (‘ahi belly) and New Zealand oysters and drank cool white wine while listening to a smallkidtime choir sister, Starr Kalahiki, sing. And oh MAN can she sing. The last time I heard her sing, we were still in HYOC together, she graduating and me probably about 14 or maybe even younger. She was incredible even back then, and now … well. It was the kind of singing that moves you in your seat, and there were certain notes so purely hit that you felt them surge through your spine, that kind of voice. And her fellow musicians, on piano and on bass, were no slouches either.

The other wonderful part about last night was the people. The parents of one of my dearest and longest friends in the world came to join us, at last minute invitation, and it was so lovely getting to talkstory and catch up and joke around. Then we ran into another choir sister and her parents. Then we ran into Starr’s parents. Then we were joined by Auntie Maile, one of the choir “Aunties,” although she was a younger auntie, barely older than some of us, and the one we felt most comfortable partying with when we came of age to do so. I felt so surrounded by good people and good food and good music.

As I lay in bed, a slight breeze in the air, I wondered why I don’t live here.

The thought occurred to me and then passed. I don’t live here because life wouldn’t actually be like this. This isn’t real life, this is vacation. But it is a very wonderful, very needed one.

Conclusion of the Three Day Lifestyle Change … and Other Random Stuff, too.

The other night, I had the opportunity to read my wife’s personal statement as part of an application for ________.* It was one of those rare opportunities one has in life to really gaze through someone else’s eyes and see as they see. I mean, I have friends, of course, I talk to them, and I confide and share in their confidences. But when you’re hanging out with friends, you often talk about the present moment: what they’ve been up to, what concerns them right now, what they’ve seen or listened to or learned. You don’t often talk mission statement.

And maybe we should.

Maybe that’s exactly the kind of spring cleaning friendships need, especially old friendships, ones that have sat high on the shelf of your life, out of the reach of raucous animals and children, back from the edge to avoid accidents—yes, up there, safe, within reach, but also gathering dust at their edges. You know. The ones you’ve come to take for granted.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? A friendship can be a thing that appears to stay mostly the same over a long span of years. A friendship can be a thing that you don’t always tend as closely as you should but that when you do turn your attention to it, it holds the same wonder it ever did, it has that same shine, it even feels the same, picking it back up from right where you left it. But the friends in that friendship are not the same, and how could they be, and why ever would you want them to be?

That’s how it was for me, reading my wife’s personal statement. Things sort of fell into place. I think I came to better understand her, and myself, and what has changed, and what never, ever—not in a gajillion trillion billions years—ever will.

* * * * *

Two days ago when I began this entry, everything neatly lined up in my head and I made fascinating connections between the disparate topics I wanted to discuss.

Too bad I didn’t write this entry up then.

* * * * *

One of the things I think I’m finally starting to understand—and I hope she’ll forgive me for saying so here—is the whole von hottie phenomenon. When Wife embarked on it, I not so secretly thought it was just a big gag. A big GOTCHA at the world. An attempt to push the boundaries, just to see how far she could take things without getting caught.

And maybe some of that is to some extent true as well.

But I was also reminded of the great gift to the world that is Laura von Holt. I have never met anyone so comfortable in their own skin, and isn’t that what von Hottie is all about—the literal extreme of that exact concept?

In reading that personal statement, I reached up to that high shelf and carefully carried Us down. I took my time dusting things off. I used a shamwow. I was thorough. And when I put Us back up, I made sure our best side was facing forward. I see now that it’s possible that my surprise at how much she’d changed in the two years I’d been gone was misplaced—that perhaps she, in fact, hadn't changed so drastically but, rather, had managed to become more herself than she’d ever been before.

And that likely the same was true of me.

* * * * *

The only New Year's Resolutions I believe I've ever actually kept:

1. Learn to make a wicked dirty martini.

2. Learn to not be so hard on myself.

Number 2 is how I translate "von Hottness" for myself. I used to give myself so much goddamned grief. For mistakes I'd made, for personality flaws, for the shape of my body, my weight, my relationships with other people. Et cetera.

Being friends with someone who treats herself so well (Wife/von Hottie) has been very good for me.

* * * * *

Days 2, 3, and ½ of the Three Day Lifestyle Change went like this:

Day 2: breakfast, check; lunch, check; dinner, slight fail. (For how can you possibly attend a birthday party without indulging the self slightly? In my version, this looked like cauliflower puree soup, 3 raw oysters, and 2 glasses of wine.)

Day 3: breakfast, check; lunch, check; dinner, check.

Day ½ : breakfast, check; lunch, check; dinner, transition out with spicy miso marinated sea bass, steamed rainbow chard, lemon, steamed sweet potato, and one glass of white wine.

Next day (Saturday): FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL. I was supposed to continue “easing out” of the lifestyle change, right? Well. Instead, I drank a huge cup of coffee, forgot to eat all day, was so starving I could have gnawed off my own arm, went to a birthday party a hour early, drank a gin and tonic, ate nachos, drank a vodka somethingorother, ate 3 mini-burgers and sweet potato fries and fried onions, drank a gin and tonic … AHEM. Et cetera.

Next day (Sunday): Minor Fail. Quick brunch with the hubby, but what a fail it was. We ate at Stan’s Place, in Brooklyn, on Atlantic.

And they have a wonderful promotion going on right now, where if you order beignets, they will give 100% of the proceeds from the beignets order to victims of the recent Haiti earthquake.

Who says donuts can’t make the world a better place, eh?

All in all, what I learned from three and a half days of success and two days of fail was that intuitive eating is not what it sounds like it should be. Intuitive eating is indeed something that must be learned. What the Three Day Lifestyle Change plan does is make you focus in particularly on what you are putting into your mouth—the particular colors, shapes, smells, tastes—and on the simple and joyful use of your hands to prepare this good, whole food for your body, and on, too, the way these particular foods feel inside of you. How do they affect your digestion and energy and skin and disposition and et cetera? And then, when you ease off the plan, as you begin to integrate other foods slowly back in (or less than slowly in my case), you feel how these other things affect you as well: dairy, alcohol, fried food, et cetera. What I like about the plan is it is not punishing, and it is not condescending, either: it does not slap your wrist nor scold you for drinking a few glasses of wine, for liking eggnog despite what it’s made of, for eating more bacon than you do vegetables.

All it does is whisper in your ear, a remembrance of the things you already know, a reminder of the things you must realize have changed with the years.

Not unlike an old friendship, actually. Any relationship, whether with the Other or with the Self, can use a little gentle rubdown from time to time. Just a moment of being completely present and aware. Just to bring out the shine.

---

*I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t say what the application(s) are for.

The Three-Day Lifestyle Change: day 2 (1/13/10, wednesday)

Day 2, Meal 1

The food play--interesting! I meant to write "plan" but it came out "play"--is going FINE! Seriously, the hardest part was finding a chunk of days free from social obligations (and I didn't even manage that; not sure what I'm going to do about my friend Caitlin's birthday party tonight). I am not having a hard time with the food part. No cravings, really. No detrimental affects to my body--well, I miss caffeine, but it's been good to start learning food-based ways of boosting energy. Also, everything is so quick and easy to prepare! It takes like 20 minutes, maybe, and often much less, because I've already made way too much quinoa/lentils, so now all I have to do is wash, cut, and steam the greens, and then throw it all together in an interesting way.

But, most of all, what I notice is my "typo" from above: it feels like play. I am working with ingredients I don't usually: beautiful dark green chard with its fiery red spine; rainbow chard, which just doesn't even look like it should be able to occur in nature like that; baby spinach, a flat and felted green; and watercress with its intricate lacework of leaves. All so delicious! Plus, red quinoa and
fancy French black lentils. Oh, the colors! The FLAVORS! And being restricted to further flavoring the above by the addition of avocado, coconut milk, raw almonds or cashews, and fruit is not a hardship but an Iron Chef challenge. I'm having an awesome time with this! What the plan makes you do is taste not salt, sweet, bitter, sour, or umami--you taste kale, coconut, avocado, etc. I mean, a lot of times when I'm eating food that's pretty bland, I just throw on more and more salt or pepper, resulting in the food tasting like salt or pepper. What that tells me is: make better food and consider other ways of flavoring.

Or as Lorelle put it to me, quite smartly:

One of the great things I think about having a very limited diet for a few days is that it puts us back in touch with what things actually taste like and how they make us feel, which enables us to sharpen our intuition about what to eat (and what we really like, and why we like things!) after the cleanse. [Lorelle, e-mail to Mayumi, January 10, 2010]

The Three-Day Lifestyle Change: day 1 (1/12/10, tuesday)

Day One

Well, from the chatter in response to my status about The Three-Day Lifestyle Change on Facebook, I'd say a lot of people are wanting to do something kinder for themselves in 2010!

Honestly, I spent half the day tracking down ingredients. I did a huge trip to Whole Foods at Union Square, on the subway (I know, so brave!), and after it was all said and done—after I was home, dealing with an overexcited puppy and all them groceries—I found that I’d forgotten the quinoa.

Shit.

I mean, quinoa is not exactly the easiest thing to find. It was because of quinoa that I thought I better go to Whole Foods in the first place.

But, no harm done. Three stores later into Brooklyn, I finally found some, and bought several boxes just for good measure.

I learned how beautiful vegetables can be, and how simple.

I learned everything really CAN be cooked in the rice cooker.

I learned not to touch any part of the steamer that’s been in boiling water.

I learned (after two uses) that I’d forgotten to take the plastic “feet” off the metal steamer (oops).

I learned that when you steam sweet potato in the rice cooker, they release enough sugar to caramelize its bottom. Which was incredible! And required the steel wool to get off!

I learned that lime and lemon help in terms of flavoring the bland.

I learned you don’t have to soak lentils.

I learned to thank god for Google. I had to figure out all this steaming business. Usually I only steam asparagus and artichokes and sometimes fish. Weird that I never thought to steam anything else.

"The Three-Day Lifestyle Change."

It all started with the temptation of a Blueprint cleanse.

I had grand ideas about doing a cleanse because of some notion of wanting a clean slate of my insides, of resolving some skin issues, of reworking my energy flows through the day, and et cetera.

But where it led me was to a fascinating conversation with my dear friend Lorelle, of The Saxena Clinic (see also the clinic's Facebook page), wherein she began to question the mechanics of a cleanse and how even the meaning behind the very notion of a "cleanse" implies that we are, in some way, “dirty” or “full of toxins.” We went back and forth a bunch, too, about why she—coming from a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) point of view & a bunch of fancy degrees (M.S., L.Ac.)—doesn’t necessarily recommend sitting there drinking just juice. And then, Lorelle unleashed Her Three-Day Plan. The basic gist of it was this:

a major diet simplification--an eliminating of complicated food for a few days, something to make us feel better and make better food choices. not that it won't make us feel cleaner, clearer-headed, maybe even lighter--but i think "cleanse" implies that we start out dirty or full of toxins, and we aren't dirty or full of toxins. [Lorelle, e-mail to Mayumi, January 11, 2010]

She reminded me, too, that the plan was not supposed to be an actual lifestyle change, but only a three-day lifestyle change. That is, I could eat this way for 3 days, maybe 5 tops, but it wasn’t meant to reset how I eat forever.

The other disclaimer I’d bet Lorelle would want me to insert to slow your roll here is: Lorelle has been a dear friend for years and so knows my approximate stats: my weight, height, and general health. So while she recommended this plan to me, she might not across the board recommend it to everyone.

OK, disclaimers dispensed with! Basically her plan involved:

Drinking a quart of water when you first wake and with every meal, for the grand total of at least a gallon a day

Eating MOST OF ALL huge amounts of steamed dark leafy greens (no limit)

Eating SECOND a lot of fresh, raw fruit; no limit here either but trying for a variety of colors consumed

Eating one small sweet potato (or, you know, half a larger one) daily

Eating THIRDLY for protein: small amounts of steamed quinoa and/or boiled/steamed lentils (no more than ½ cup per meal, you should eat more greens if you’re still hungry)

Eating JUST A LITTLE of “good” fats: avocados, raw almonds, raw cashews, and coconut milk

Raw, organic freshly juiced fruit juice is okay

Everything organic

Snacking is fine

No salt, no pepper, no spices, no herbs, no nothing that wasn’t detailed above

She also recommended taking this time to do other good things for your mind and body: yoga, perhaps, or meditation. Even a long, but not hard, reflective run or walk.

Lorelle concluded with the stats of the plan:

i know, not super exciting, but good for you. not low fat, but no bad fats, and overall this is actually pretty low calorie (it's so high in fiber that it won't be easy to eat enough stuff to make it high calorie--but not low calorie enough to be dangerous or put you in starvation/storage mode. plus these are all low glycemic-load foods, so your blood sugar should stay stable and you won't want to gnaw your own arm off. on days 4 and 5, come out of the cleanse gradually, easily and intuitively...lean proteins before heavier ones, steamed whole grains before butter sauces, cultured dairy (like yogurt and kefir) before straight milk. listen to what your body wants. if you're doing this to isolate an allergen or sensitivity, add things that can cause sensitivities back in one at a time, leaving a few days before adding each new one. things that can cause sensitivity include dairy, wheat gluten (this can include oatmeal, which has a similar protein to gluten in it), nightshade vegetables, spicy foods, seafood. warning: you will probably poop a lot. [Lorelle, e-mail to author, December 31, 2009]

You all can also look forward to more of Lorelle’s sage advice forthcoming in Hawaii Women’s Journal, where she has recently landed a column on holistic health, wellness, and what I like to call “learning to eat intuitively.” And yes, I realize that learning to do something that should be intuitive is a bit of an oxymoron, but I think it’s just the kind of moron I was being heretofore.

smart and pretty.*

I am up to my eyeballs in editing right now, but I have to take a moment to say one thing.

MAN, do I know some smart and pretty people.

I guess the first inkling I had of this thought was up at Vermont. We do a lot of drinking there, and a lot of hanging out, and a lot of talking story. Also, some listening, some note taking, some clock watching. But then you go to the student readings and your friends get up to the podium and you’re seriously like, What the fuck! We are so collectively GOOD. Man, we can totally write! This whole MFA thing, it ain’t kiddin’ around!

That’s pretty much word for word what I thought as I heard my classmates read. I mean, the progress is actually incredible. We were all pretty good to start with—at least I thought so—but I was BLOWN AWAY by what my friends produced this time, after the year and a half we’ve been in the program.

Then there’s that I joined the staff as copyeditor for Hawaii Women’s Journal (see also their website)—because I strongly believe in and support what they are doing but alas have only time and labor to donate (no money).

First, just look at the staff: Jennifer Hee, Editor, who is one of my all-time favorite writers (Choose Our Own Adventure) even before I stop and think about the fact that she survived Iolani, Harvard, and the Peace Corps; and Kathy, Publisher, who I haven’t even met yet but can already tell I’m going to be ALL about, who organizes for Girl Fest Hawaii, and moves and shakes Hawaii, and (in her own words, via Facebook) "[makes] life difficult for assholes." (What's not to like there!) In the beginnings of talking through HWJ with Jenn and Kathryn, I start to think about who I might encourage to submit so that Issue 1 is fleshed out enough.

And that’s when it happens.

I am smacked full and open-palmed in the face by my life.

I mean, it is not always perfect, but it is mine. And it is some luck, and some work, that I’ve ended up with these kinds of people in it. I mean, I really know so many amazing writers—and some I even have known for years, or knew and then didn’t know and now know again. And all of them are pitching up a storm, sending in their wonderful, wonderful work—their fiction, their essays, their columns about things they’re deeply passionate about—all of which makes me unable to be anything but absolutely grateful to have been in the right place at the right time. And, interestingly enough, the right place at the right time, in this instance, was on Facebook, when Jenn Hee sent out a mass message about HWJ. Which I take as my only solid proof so far that Facebook isn’t always a time suck. Anyway. I don’t often find myself looking forward to copyediting, but in this instance, I am, I really really am. I think: How wonderful that HWJ is going to gather all my favorite voices together in one place— like a journal tailor-made for me.

So, thank you, all of you, for letting me know you and for being so goddamn smart and pretty.

---

* I give grateful credit for this very helpful little phrase to Wife and Adrienne, who I believe originated it.

The flood ensues.

Well, I'm back and I lost my "found Friday" and I relaxed and cuddled with dog and man and indulged myself instead. The little work I did yesterday pales next to what I'll have to do in the coming few days--and the coming weeks and months. I see no end, my friends. Not a one.

My faculty advisor for this my last semester will be Xu Xi. I'm very excited about working with her. As she mentioned sardonically to me quite early on, it was pretty much fate that we'd work together eventually, being both Asian. And, indeed, here we are.

But I have to say: I take it as a bad sign that last night I had an anxiety dream about delivering my lecture. I mean, seriously: already? I have six months to worry and I'm going to start now? In my dream, I was in Noble Lounge, the room was about half-filled, and I could see Xu sitting there with a large yellow legal pad and red pen. I was keeping an eye on the clock, had about 5-10 minutes to go before I'd have to start when I realized not only had I not written a lecture, but I was about to deliver my last semester critical thesis, word for word--a paper I had never practiced aloud, never timed, and (in my at times overachieving fashion) turned out to be 40 pages long (incl. the bibliography) when it needed only to be about half that. It was a terrible feeling.

Wish me luck.

But then it's 2010, and things are going to go different. Maybe my luck has changed. Perhaps I don't need your wishes.

((wish anyway))

warm and ...

wherein I summon the cajones to dance in public. yes, again.

and in a hawaiian dress. in the dead of winter.

cajones, indeed.

(photo by the very talented suz)

fuzzy!

"foxy"*

(photography by the very talented suz)

---

* fox fur earmuffs rock my world. bless you, century 21.

Hey, lookie there, it's 2010!

Happy New Year!

Several days in!

Who cares!

It's been busy here in Vermont, and the wireless hasn't been working, and on top of that I got this horrible ear-nose-throat-sinus miserableness that's going around and can't seem to shake it, so the end result has been that I've gotten no blogging done, no AA work done, and hardly enough schoolwork done. The secret to the wireless, though, I've at least been able to fix: it involves, unfortunately, staying up past when everyone goes to sleep to use it--OR skipping a really popular lecture to use it then.

But you know what I have gotten done? Having a really nice residency. The pace is better this time, and all the social stickyness unstuck itself, to the point that all I do is walk around smiling at people I know and people I kind of know and people I want to know. Except for those couple of days where I wasn't smiling at all because I felt like death warmed over, that is.

I even danced hula again, a slow one, and got such a rousing round of applause, it makes me wish it wasn't such torture every single time to summon the cajones to do it. Because when you are dancing from the right place in your heart, and your audience is watching from the right place in their heart, dancing and looking at all their smiling beautiful faces is like the best feeling in the entire freakin' world. Even while I consciously also noted how much my hands were shaking, I for the first time had the clarity and calmness to say: you know what? it doesn't even matter. So what. My hands shake. I still want to do this thing. I hope this is the first sign of learning to cope with performance anxiety.

Anyway, god BLESS 2010. See! Already I can tell it's going to be a great year. I don't even feel like making resolutions, you know? I feel like waiting and seeing what the year will bring. That said, I will probably end up drawing some up because, you know, I like lists and I'm compulsive like that. Will learning to use my creme brulee torch be on that list for a fourth year running? You can bet on it.

the year's end.

Note the date. The year's end--and in fact the decade's--approaches swift. Obviously I am excited about it: 2009 was a real bitch, and I am eager for the metaphorical turn to something else.

I've been mostly doddering around the house these last few days, pushing through the editing of the June 2010 issue of AA,* trying to get all my workshop reading done, reading for pleasure, finding real random gems as I reorganize my files, submitting and getting my story "The Shape of Love" accepted to Hawaii Woman's Journal,** listening to about four different versions of auld lang syne, and packing for Vermont.

That's what time it is, for another residency, the dreaded winter one, with temps dipping below zero and all of us bundled, sniffling and miserable, into our unfashionably padded coats and cooped up in the dorms. Oh, goody. I'm hopeful, though, that we've all tried to learn what we need to do socially to survive ten days on such a small campus. And by that sentence, I am really talking about myself. I felt so caught last year, uncomfortable, uncertain, and then ashamed of decisions I made, anyway, despite all that torturous silent inner deliberation. I wrote all kinds of cryptic crap on this blog about "lessons learned" and "values" and blahblahblahblahblah, but what I come to now, a year later, is this:

Who cares what anyone else does, Mayumi? Stick your nose back in your own business where it belongs. Don't want to feel like you are taking sides? Then refuse to see any. Wanna be friends with everyone? Then be a friend. GEEZUS.

I am hopeful that we can all be mature adults and get along. Drama-free winter residency 2010, yeah!

Then again, you haven't seen the size of these dorms.

Am I still going to do whatever I can to be present and listen to my gut about what I want to do, with whom, and when? Certainly--on a case by case, slow as we go, basis. Does inclusion/exclusion stuff still make me extremely uncomfortable and irk the fuck out of me? Well, duh, but where do I get off imagining my point of view is an objective one? There's no goddamn such thing.

Anyway, here's to hoping the only fireworks are because of New Year's Eve.

Wait! Wait! Did I mention being excited at all? Because I am that, too. Residency is a ten day vacation from real life for me. No dog walking, no housework, no doing real work at the expense of creative work. 'Course I miss my beast and my man, but then again it is only ten days. Meanwhile, it is ten days chockfull with writerly friends and readings and lectures and brilliant professors and eatingbreathingsleepingthinking writing 24/7! For some of you, this may sound like an exotic form of torture, but for me it's an absolute dream.

As for 2009: you can suck it.

Regarding resolutions: I suppose I did learn to be less hard on myself, and friggin delicious dirty martinis (hendrick's, dash of extradry vermouth, heavy dash of brine, blue-cheese stuffed olives, stirred gently 30 times with lots of large ice)*** were in the bag. The creme brulee goal, though, fell flat on its crusty little delicious face. I didn't even dust off the torch and ended up using the ramekins for serving ice cream. Ahhh, maybe next year.

2010 is about to bring a lot of change again. There's looking to be an other big cross-country move at some point, I'll celebrate being with Dave for ten years in March, I'm turning 30 in April, I'm (hopefully) graduating with my MFA in July, and frankly I'm starting to look very intently at starting a family.

I say, Welcome, 2010 ... and bring it. Wishing all of you who are reading this the very best in the new year.

---

* And how crazy is that: that at my work, I'm already halfway through 2010? I write to you from the future. 2010 is awesome, by the way, and much kinder than its predecessor, old tyrant that she was.

** About which I am PUMPED BY THE WAY, HAVE I WRITTEN IT ENOUGH PLACES ON THE INTERNET YET!

*** I want one. Like, right now.