my favorite things

an ongoing compilation of things that are like golden warmth suffusing my innards. i started this list while in san d after my ba ngoai had a second stroke in may to eke out a small corner for rainbows.

rainbows remind me of my childhood in honolulu. the lush fragrance of verdant foliage, the kelly green and vermillion squished tree frogs on asphalt, vivid hued kapiolani after the rains. the rainbows on the mainland are so pastel and faded in comparison.

manzanita tree "mountain driftwood"
wildfire-propagated native shrub to the Western chaparral region being nothinged by the langoliers of sherbert sub-/urban simulacra, sprinklers and palm tree imports in a neverending story about the failure of the imagination . the Pallid Manzanita is a federally protected endangered species that grows in Oakland and is usually uprooted willy nilly by to protect the Hills property values. my burl of manzanita from fifth grade camp in Cuyamaca and an egg-shaped rock from ong ba ngoai's house on Auburn are the remnants of my childhood mementos after my stepdad's accidental shed explosion and thievery by psycho ex.

barn swallows
take a walk through a meadow during champagne & strawberry-hued dusk of a golden summer through an aerial ballet of swallows flitting, roll and court catastrophe on a trackless roller coaster of agile grace.

miniature donkeys
my favoritist stuffed animal was a melancholy white & red jack that i chose from my mother's mysteriously procured bag of stuffed animals one easter, though sorely tempted by the teddy bear, because i thought no one else would love him and so rescued the donkey from neglect. he unfortunately was donkey-napped by the aforementioned thief. though i have loved horses ever since i used to gallop along playing Unicorn on the playground, and read every Chincoteague book, i am won over by the canny perserverance of the humble donkey. and wouldn't a small herd of jack & jennet be just the way to keep the acreage trim?



pygmy elephants

timefiller

i'm one of those people who like lists. list of groceries; things to do; desired appliances, hardware tools, and housewares; favorite things; resolutions; lists of wishes. on random scraps of ephemera that inevitably disappear prompting me to begin anew in journals, on blogs. etc. mind you, i don't often stick to them, the lists. i don't take direction well, even from myself.

so this is an enumeration list of sorts. while i've been here in san diego for the last three weeks, not counting things read in lobbies & waiting rooms, i've read nine magazines--two trashy, seven "lifestyle" (two of which were ecological consumerism), 1 shopping, one city--and eight point seven five books (5 .25 fantasy, one novel, one allegory, point five self-help, one nature, and two childbirth). and am working on 3.25 more.

oh, and i've learned to knit babyhats with five doublepoint needles. working on the booties. much harder. maybe i should stick with rectangles and cones.

of all those offerings, these are the ones that i'd recommend:

The Wizard of the Crow by Ngui~gi~ wa Thiong'o
A satirical magical allegory of postcolonial African history/State. It's like Wretched of the Earth (Franz Fanon), How Europe Colonized Africa and Nervous Conditions (Tsitsi Dengaremba) mashup told with the cadence and nuance of a traditional African storytale.

Treasure at the Heart of Tanglewood by Meredith Ann Pierce
My love of fantasy arose because they were like fairytales with complex female heroines. This simple one naturalizes the sacred feminine. Her Darkangel Trilogy is also great.

and of the random movies i've watched too fragmented to list:

Stranger than Fiction
"this may sound like gibberish to you, but i think my life is a tragedy." Damn good movie. Quirky, literary/philosophical, great witty dialogue, in spite of Will Ferrell--whose "i want you" is childish, plaintative and pathetic rather than sexy, disarming and charming. but he is suitably awkward for the rest of the movie to work, "If I was [staring at your tits], i can assure you it was only as a representative of the United States Government." I Heart Huckabees-Office Space-and i can only assume Adaptation genre. only numerical not existential vs. nihilist. and bonus, Jude Law isn't in it. that's always a good thing. Dustin Hoffman is great in a supporting role "dramatic irony. it'll fuck you every time." and "aren't you relieved to know you're not a golem?" as is Maggie Gyllenhaal, "Get bent, TAXMAN! Taxmaaaaaaan!" and the classic "Actually... it's my weekly evil-conspiracy and needlepoint group." Emma Thompson rocks. as always. "Well, Penny, like anything worth writing...it came inexplicably and without method."