philosophie.

the day when good things all happen together

Well, first and foremost, the pair of vintage Ferragamo loafers that I ordered has arrived – and I love love LOVE these!! Definitely look way more sleek in person , and I can say that I finally have another pair of manly shoes to wear on stage when I choose to – it’s been too long after my last pair of spectator oxfords served their duty by cracking on the bottom.

Secondly, my wonderful fiancé came home and surprised me with an iphone! Sure I’ve heard a lot about how amazing the phone is, and even though the only two cellphones that I owned are all free that came with the contract (because I for some reason have not much desire for high-technological gadgets) but this is definitely a gift highly treasured! (and hopefully will be an aid to my lack of blogging and photo-uploading etc.)

Tonight, as a gesture of gratitude, I made spinach pesto pasta with shrimp and a touch of almond essence (as inspired by Olivier a couple of days ago!).

I am finally back to New York

.. and just in time for Irene’s visit! Where I am in Manhattan, however, seem to be relatively unaffected as I opened my window on a peaceful Sunday morning, there was only the playfully ferocious breeze coming through, no more rain and even a bit of sunshine. I know it is absolutely a blasphemy to say that I am slightly disappointed that Irene didn’t come as hard as they proclaimed it would, considering there are so many people who lost lives in Katrina and the most recent tsunami in Japan, but at least I had hoped that the rain would go on all through Sunday. Please forgive my demonic thoughts – don’t we all have a little bit of that sadistic contradiction in us?

In any case, a long and complicated story short, they let me cross the border into the States and prior to coming back to the big apple, I had taken a week off to spend at a wonderfully cozy cottage at the shore of Lake Eire. Magnificent sunset accompanied by wine on the private beach, my heart was filled with so much thanksgiving for the obvious luxury of being set in such a poetic scenery, but also, above all, the mere fact of living. What a month of lesson-learning and soul-detoxing.

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When I came back, half of my plants already died (my heart cringed at the sight of lifelessness); however, my mettlesome congo pepper produced a fruit! I was elated. :)

And with my first pepper, I created this dish which is light for the summer, but super spiecy.

My dear readers and friends, life is really quite unexpected!

I came back to Toronto for two days to visit my mother, and as I was crossing the border back into the States, I was denied entry by the border patrols and their callous demeanors. They accused me of overstaying my student visa – which wasn’t true, because I had actually another month of grace period – and of course of illegally staying n the US. All in all, they had to send me back to Toronto where I have to stay until I get a visa (which might take weeks, or even months).

Aside from their axiomatic boorish attitudes (by the way, what’s up with that? blasé because of their power to humiliate and embarrass? ) and my brazen disgust of being accused of doing something illegal, I am not all that traumatized really. Yes it sucks, a lot, because some concerts I was planning on doing with friends in New York I can no longer do, some important personal projects are put aside, plans to hang out with friends are now abandoned, can’t take care of my plants personally anymore.. I don’t have my own laptop with me, no ipod, none of the books I wanted to read and none of the scores I am currently learning – I didn’t even bring clean clothes to change into for that matter! It is not an overstatement to say that I should feel like a fish out of the water. But I feel more like my life at this point (which is centered in New York) has been put on a very abrupt halt – like a train trying to break after seeing a person lying, tied to the tracks; so abrupt it could potentially come into a disastrous crash.

On the brighter side, yes I did bring a pair of flip-flops and a pair of heels (yes heels! I’m glad I brought them even for a two-day trip) and have pretty much all of my essentials with me (kindle is a plus! though it’s running out of battery soon and I do NOT have the charger with me…) In my predicament, though, I am learning a cardinal lesson, a great lesson for life.

Sometimes you think you need everything you have to live. Well, this is a time for me to realize just how little I need to be happy. Today I spent a wonderful afternoon with my friends whom I haven’t seen for so long (which I wouldn’t get a chance to do because I hardly stay for very long in Toronto), chatting up and enjoying each other’s company, while sharing some of the good but especially bad experiences from the past year. Then when we look back, it is always that life has made us stronger, and happier, and the predicaments somehow worked in our favour to sculpt our personality.

We always want more things, better things; that is why we can never take a vacation off. We work so hard, and don’t have time for things like appreciating just the moment we are alive. I know all these things are such a passe, but really, when your life in on an abrupt halt, you can either be upset and stay so, or look at it appreciatively.

Sometimes I would spend the three months of summer elsewhere – Banff, Tibet, Lijiang, and that’s when I seem to be able to say to myself, when you return to your “other life” you should always remember this stress-free time because that’s where your life is. Not wanting more, not needing more, but simply be. I think perhaps we should all switch the default mode of living from the “working day-to-day me” to the “vacation me” in our bifurcated lives.

I am stressed, of course, about my current situation. But I hope I’ll always remember where my real life truly lies.

June 24

My good friend J came back to town.

When I met up with him for lunch today, I couldn’t even recognize him due to his decision on breeding a full beard – a bit of an unfair game here, since men can veritably change their look drastically within such a short period of time and us women cannot (well, unless you go overboard with the makeup, which definitely takes longer than shaving).

Within a the span of the time it takes for a lunch, I got to hear about his travels (only briefly) in Europe, or I should say all over Europe. Then we inevitably decided on a few pieces to learn together over the summer – which always makes me so happy! Summer is a great time for chamber music, and for relaxing with not many deadlines for learning pieces which means I can usually take my time and work on the things I have always wanted to work on.

New York has been drizzling and raining on and off for the past few days, and I can only say that I am absolutely taking delight in the the permeating of water through the sky.  Something about rainy days that connects one’s memories from the distant past and put them all together, sometimes as disparate as they may be, into one big harmonious Cosmo of  scent, sentiment, sound, love, life.  On rainy nights I am always transfixed.

One of the most recent memories of rainy days was one day in New Haven – which is where J will be going this fall to attend Yale. I am thoroughly happy for him, and he looked at me and said, half jokingly, I am definitely not feeling guilty about any of this after all that has happened to me this year. I said, why would you feel guilty? He chuckled, and said, ‘cuz I’m Jewish?

Now, that’s a culture I have only heard about when I was growing up in China but only got to know better and more personally recently.  You might remember when I wrote about my friend Mindy, who is also Jewish, who during her last visit recommended me this book called The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany. I think the title introduces the content pretty concisely. I am going to start reading it today and we’ll see what kind of a journey it will take me.

 

New York, the many faces

An American friend, Mindy, who works in Minnesota came to visit New York just this past weekend for her high school union. I hadn’t seen her in about ten years. She is one of my FIRST foreign friends – we met in Beijing while I was ten years old, and she was working for China Radio International at the time. If I were to talk about how we met, I’d have to sit here for another hour. But we met, even though she is of the age of my parents, she has such a flamboyant and larger than life personality that I felt – though slightly intimidated because I spoke practically no English back in Beijing at that young age, but also closer to her because I felt she was one of us, the children.

Ten years has past, I am now living in New York and able to communicate freely in English, meeting her again feels not only like meeting an old friend, but also gaining a new one. The loud, happy laughters and exaggerated emotional outbursts are still there, but I am realizing that she has so many stories to tell and so much intellectual insights to offer. Time sculpts us into such interesting pieces.

Mindy was born in Washington Heights, and she loves that area dearly. Today I went there, discovering it for the first time in my life, this peaceful beauty on the Manhattan island.