illusions, experience

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

The only exposure I had to Hayao Miyazaki as a kid was watching 'Tonari No Totoro' over and over (in Japanese, without subtitles, on VHS) with my sister and having to figure out what was happening purely through the amazing visuals and sounds. Which I guess obviously indicates the magical appeal of film because ultimately it can be universally understood. So you can understand my slight disappointment in watching the English-dubbed 'My Neighbor Totoro' not too long ago and having a little of that magic doused out with the rather terrible English dubbing. Not that I don't laud Disney for attempting to and succeeding in bringing Miyazaki films to a wider audience. I think in this case though, just like any other foreign film I prefer to put on subtitles and try to view it the way it is seen in its home country.


Howl's Moving Castle features a girl named Sophie, who works hard to maintain her deceased father's hat business and, because she is a little plainer in features compared to her mother and younger sister, has low self-esteem. However she attracts the attention of Howl, the eponymous young wizard who saves and takes care of her in a chance encounter. This encounter breeds jealousy in the Witch of the Waste, who curses Sophie into an old woman (which is when the movie really starts), who then leaves her home to search for Howl and a way to lift the curse. Sophie meets a slew of colorful characters on the way - a mute but friendly and helpful scarecrow she dubs Turnip-head, the fire demon Calcifer that runs Howl's castle, and then of course Howl's castle itself (not that it is sentient), which personally was really a treat for me to see a magical, shape-shifting behemoth of a piece of architecture playing such an incredible role in what's probably my #3 of Miyazaki's films (1 and 2 being Spirited Away and Tonari No Totoro).

Enough talking now. This is why I don't really do film posts anymore...!

Rudbeckia hirta

The Black-eyed Susan have finally bloomed! And just in time, because our sunflower (just one this year...) has exhausted itself.

poor poopie

My Westie BB suffered a little mishap while doing her 'Rocket Dog' routine in the backyard a few days ago. She was zipping around the yard and must have caught her toe/foot in a crevice in some bricks because she quietly walked back inside and started licking her back paw. I saw a trail of blood leading all the way outside, and so we cleaned it and put some antibiotic cream on it, then got it properly looked at at the vet. The medicine makes her sleepy and low in energy, and we haven't walked her in two days. Hoping she gets better soon. Also I just want to note I how I love that the purple bandage makes her paw look like a little bean, heh.

the olive tree

I spent much of my summers as a child climbing the branches or playing in the shade of the olive tree in my front yard. In elementary school I idiotically carved the initials of all my best friends into some of its branches; idiotic in two ways because that seriously harms the tree, and because as a youngster I didn't realize that friendships have a tendency to fade away. Did not mean to sound bitter about the last point, but haven't you spoken to a childhood friend of yours whom you realize you now have nothing in common with except for old playground and classroom memories? It's weird but also inevitable, and not a bad thing. Good thing is that as the tree ages, the carvings fade also. I found that because I've gotten so big it was harder for me to maneuver myself up and down the tree, and I couldn't believe that I'd sit up there and read a book comfortably for short spells, either. This tree was actually one of two - the second one was planted on the other side of the walkway up to the front door but by the time we'd moved in it was a dead skeleton, so we chopped it down and had the stump in the backyard for a time. In recent years our olive tree seems to have suffered a blight - the olives come out all mottled instead of perfectly green and smooth to plump and purply-black. It kind of pains me to see it like this. Sometimes wasps like to nest in it, and I noticed that a young olive sapling is growing right out of its roots, and I wonder if we let it grow if it will grow healthier. I guess then that what I've observed is that change is constant, if not gradual, and everything is subject to it.

summer obsessions

Making woven friendship bracelets combats any instances of nervous energy that I can't get rid of. So many bracelets and no one to give them to :(. KIDDING. I want to make like a hundred of these and carry them in a bag and give them to my friends as I meet up with them - I swear, aside from my sister most of the people I want to give these to don't even currently live in the same city/state/country as me. This is my excuse to go visit them rather than to say HEY COME BACK HOME.

Kombucha, a tea-like drink with a live culture in it that ferments the whole thing and it's fizzy and magical and delicious. The first time I bought this was from a tiny Wild Oats/Whole Foods in Kansas City and then I drank it in a weedy lot in the middle of an artsy/dangerous (couldn't figure out if it was either/or or both) neighborhood and it defined the hippiest, weirdest picnic I had ever been on. Since Trader Joe's doesn't carry Kombucha I've been traitorously slinking off to Whole Foods or Sprouts to get my fix. Whole Foods had a fourth of July sale on Kombucha and its Synergy line and I was going to buy a whole case of them until I realized I would have nowhere to store them. Curses! I love the flavors Gingerade, Cosmic Cranberry and the Trilogy one. I mean I like pretty much all of them except for the green one. Too much like seaweed even though I love seaweed.

Buying cut flowers. For all of June I bought peonies for my mom (not cheap!) and lately it has been sunflowers, lavender, and for a weird reason TJ's is selling a dozen roses for $4.99 so I might get in on that and get some roses tomorrow. Not red ones. Maybe pink for my mom or maybe those funny pale green ones. We have tons of flowers growing in the yard but cut flowers indoors work wonders for the ambience of a room. Weird. I am genuinely happy when I am surrounded by flowers.

Band of Brothers. I grew up not having cable (still don't actually...) and I remember like way back in 2001 Band of Brothers was a huge deal on HBO. I had friends who obsessed over it but for some reason I had never gotten around to watching it. I mentioned this to my pop recently and his reaction was "WHAT!" so he immediately ordered the blu-ray set online and handed it to me and basically every evening last week was spent watching one whole disc (two episodes) until we finished. Addicting, amazing, and so powerful. I mean I haven't been this moved by television since Doctor Who. I love every character, and the fact that the characters were based on actual people made it so much more poignant and meaningful. I'm going to watch these again, because I have to make my sister watch them before she goes back to school in the fall, and then I am going to force my best friend in Australia to watch them with me so we can cry and squeal over men and battles and war. I can't believe I got into this a decade after the fact but I'm so glad I did. (p.s. started watching The Pacific, too. It's good but hasn't hit me in the same way BoB has...yet.)

my first 'camera'

This is the 1988 Fisher Price 'Crazy Camera.' I believe this was a hand-me-down from some of my cousins and the fact that it is the same age as me blows my mind. This thing has the works - a sweet flash, a film advance knob and shutter and four filter colors (plus a regular clear setting) and other crazy effect filters like a kaleidoscope effect, an extra-wide stretch effect, a split and a triple. I would entertain myself for whole afternoons with this, pretending to take pictures of my mom cooking dinner or my sister playing with toys on the living room floor. I remember I couldn't wait until I had my own camera, but until then I made do with the pictures I had to take with my imagination. This is one of a small handful of remaining childhood relics I have and stupidly, sentimentally I don't see myself parting with it. It sits on top of a shelf that displays all my cameras, along with a framed picture of my pop, and though I don't consider myself a photographer of great caliber, it is very special to me, a reminder of imaginative and unfettered days.

BG-175

I found this at the PCC Flea earlier this month and was told it was either from WWII or the Vietnam War. It was ten bucks and reeked of corroded metal, and upon doing some light googling I read that it held the GN-58 Hand Generator, which I guess powered the radio stations they used back then. It's perfect. It's olive drab (erm, obviously), fits a camera (or four!), or a ton of notebooks, and holy smokes it's solid. I had to wrestle the little trout and California flag pins in. It has some sturdy round snaps too. I have an open baggie of baking soda in there to absorb some of the smell, it's kind of working. Anywho that's that. I like utility bags that kind of make my mom cry as she wonders why I refuse to carry a decent purse. I have too much stuff to lug around at all times and it seems that military-grade canvas is the only thing that'll do it.

making kimchi with mom

BB was confused about the newspapers and vegetables spread out all over the kitchen floor, but wanted to help anyway.

Quality control - inspecting each radish. thanks BB!

Separating the roots from the green tops, and reserving a small portion of the green stuff for the final product.

I scrubbed all the roots free of dirt and sliced them in halves, then quarters.

Mom pouring in the salt, which is what pickles the whole lot, obviously...

Letting it sit for a couple of hours.

Bonus shot of Maxie snuffling through the spinach we cleaned & cooked after preparing the kimchi.

I keep typing kimchi like "kimchee" which I guess is closer to how I pronounce it. I went to the Korean supermarket in Little Tokyo yesterday with my mom and she went crazy getting all sorts of veggies and fruit and seasonings while I gazed at the lobsters, halibut, octopi, abalones and sea cucumbers in the tanks by the butcher section. It's like going to the aquarium... in a sad, morbid way. I get sad thinking about the animals I eat, but their deliciousness eventually trumps my non-existent-activist/animal-loving heart so instead I silently thank the animals and sing praises to them through my belly. I ended up cooking all day with my mom - julienning carrots & ginger, peeling & crushing garlic, boiling & shocking spinach, bean sprouts, lots of sautéing and making sure there's enough rice to go with everything. Then I got caught up in working on something else so my mom finished off the seasoning of the kimchi, so I unfortunately did not get shots of that. But I think we'll be making more in the near future.

wurstkuche with steph

Steph flew out to L.A. from New York and is here for a little over a week and I got to spend the day with her today! Everything, meaning the-way-we-usually-do-things was slightly reversed - while in the past she often took us to our destinations (school, Disneyland, Sonic, Samy's), today I decided to drive! And back when she was still in L.A. she always showed me goood places to eat/shop/visit but today when she expressed no preference for lunch I took us to Wurstkuche. Steph got the duck & bacon sausage and I got the buffalo... and we snarfed them up with some fries. Steph bought the ridiculous box of water and upon drinking it she said un-ironically and with an air of surprise, "Well it doesn't taste any different..." to which I just guffawed out loud & said something silly about brilliant marketing. She then went to tell me how the water in New York tastes pretty good and I became so obsessed with that idea that she said "I'll bottle some and send it to you" but I told her no, this gives me another good reason to come visit you there! Then we went searching for the L.A. Gun Club which we will visit before she leaves next week (!!!), went to a small coffee shop in South Pas where we talked about movies and spent a lot of time laughing, and it made me happy to goof around and enjoy life with a good old friend whom I hadn't seen in half a year.

the long beach flea

Went to the Long Beach Flea this past Sunday. The last time I had gone was last summer so that justified making the trip out with my mom even though I keep telling myself I should keep the spending to a minimum. My sister asked me the night before the excursion if I could please keep an eye out for nice chains to hang pendants from, which was so funny because those were already on my mental list. My sister and I both have lots and lots of pendants and a scarcity of quality chains to hang them from. I realized quickly enough that it's hard to find simple, silver chains but there is a huge abundance of gold/gold-tone gaudy ones to pick from. I managed to find a good chain for her with a giant medallion from Colombia on it as pictured on her blog, and found one for myself with a strange pendant on it that I realized right away as the trusty hammer of the Norse god Thor. I also got a beautiful sea-green glass fishing float which I secretly pretend is one of those glass orbs in The Department of Mysteries in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and I spend a few minutes every day gazing at it when I am taking a break from being busy. The keys and chain sans-penny charm are atop a crumbling copy of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray and the metal items were had for a mere $2. Last thoughts - I'd like to color code my bookshelves but then the genres and authors would get all mixed up and the thought of that terrifies me, so I'll keep the color coding confined to my t-shirts and underwear drawer.

king of the wild frontier

I got this for $5 at the Rose Bowl last week. Impulsive and kind of stupid yes, seeing how old and crumbly it was. I meant to pass it by, but upon looking inside and seeing a yellowed piece of paper with the lyrics to "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" painstakingly typed out along with another lyric I stupidly became attached. I couldn't figure out what the bag had been for. A tiny set of binoculars? Probably not. A point and shoot camera bag? Maybe... I guess after a rough week previous I meant to console myself with retail therapy. I am doing much better lately, I have a schedule set for myself that I have finally decided to follow. Everything's in my own hands, and it's about time I start using them.

early uses of california plants

A family friend gave me this book along with a huge Trader Joe's bag-ful of white sage last month and I read it all at once before bed a few weeks ago, but never said anything about it. It's very straightforward, full of illustrations of the plants featured along with its description and use, so much fun!