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Years ago, I saw an ad in a Japanese magazine that depicted a couple enjoying a refreshing, sumptuous lunch on a wooden platform built over a resplendent yet gentle waterfall in the midst of spring.  I think it was a sake ad.  I salivated over the memory of this magical image, and asked a Japanese friend where I could find something like it.

“That was just an advertisement,” she said, smiling.  “There is no place like that.”

Recently, while watching an NHK nature/food/culture documentary (the kind with a tranquil English speaker’s voice and Ryuichi Sakamoto playing contemplative, tender piano), I caught a two-second glimpse of something resembling the ad, and the words “Kibune kawa-something.”

“It EXISTS!!!”  I ran to my desk for a pen and paper.

The sake advertisement had depicted a gloriously Photoshopped version of kawadoko, a summertime dining treat made famous in the Kyoto area (and particularly in the mountain village of Kibune).  Folks seeking escape from the heat and humidity enjoy kaiseki-ryōri and cold nagashi-sōmen on a deck over a rushing mountain stream.

そこに行きましょう!

“Can you teach me how to make curtains?” I asked Mom.

“Yes,” she said pleasantly.  “You just buy them from the store.”

“But I’m picky about fabric, so I want to make them myself.”  

“I suggest you not to do it,” she responded.

Erik’s roommate, Durand, got a cat.  

Durand doted on Milagro, constantly asking his roommates to check on him while he was out - feed him, let him outside, pet him, “make sure he’s ok.”

The roommates eventually got annoyed by the coddling and requests for special cat treatment.  Erik started sneaking into Durand’s room and scooping the cat dumps out of the litter box and throwing them away.  This went on for a week or so. 

Durand, worried that Milagro had stopped pooping, took him to the vet, who said that the cat seemed fine.  Durand kept worrying.

The next day, Erik went into Durand’s room and took an enormous sh*t in Milagro’s litter box.

Durand came home and discovered the monster poop.

Grandma’s house had a cesspool in the backyard.  

Grandpa or Grandma had cut a hole in the top of an orange construction cone and stuck a second cone upside-down into it (like an ice cream cone), creating a plastic portable toilet.  This toilet sat in a shed-like room away from the main part of the house.  

Petra and I were instructed to pour water into the cone after use, shake and swirl the contents around, and dump everything into the swamp.  

The backyard was pretty, with close-cropped green grass, guava, mango, lychee and loquat trees, subtropical flowers and an anti-fragrant cesspool.  You carried the cone out to the pit, moved the corrugated tin lid aside, poured the cone’s contents in, dragged the lid back in place, and took the cone indoors for a rinse.

Petra usually told me to swirl, empty and wash her cone for her, so I did.  

The cones were actually a pleasant alternative to the indoor toilets, which were housed in narrow wooden stalls in the hallway.  When you went in and closed the door, you felt like you were inside a square, claustrophobic, unsanitary tree.  

Both bathrooms were much nicer than public Taiwanese restrooms.  

I recently asked Petra if she remembered making me swirl and wash her cone for her.

"Yes," she said, with a satisfied smirk.

During an evening walk, I stopped in a cul-de-sac to stretch.  

Suddenly, a young girl and her dog bounded outside and planted themselves next to me on the sidewalk, staring ahead into the street.  I thought this was weird until a well-groomed dad appeared from the same driveway, wheeling a portable basketball hoop.  He rolled it to the corner of the cul-de-sac and ran back into the house.  I imagined he was a screenwriter in the middle of something.

The girl started dribbling, and a cat appeared out of nowhere and settled into a good viewing spot.  He watched the girl and ball with great interest.

“Is that your cat?” I asked.

“No, it’s our neighbor’s.  He likes to watch me practice.”

The girl’s dog got bored and went inside, but the cat stayed.

I planned a trip from Taipei down to central Taiwan. 

“You are taking the train?”  Dad asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t eat or drink anything for several hours before.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want to use the bathroom on the train.”

“Ok.”

“Make sure not to eat or drink anything for several hours,” he repeated. 

Later, Mom took me aside.

“Emmie,” she said.  “You don’t want to use the bathroom on the train.”

“Yeah, Dad told me.”

“Emmie.  It is important.  Make sure you don’t eat or drink anything before you get on.  If you do, you’ll be sorry.”  

"I guess the bathrooms are disgusting?"

"It was so terrible," she said.

Let us all go here together.

Chupa’s friend Jonic, a creative director at an ad agency, has a lovely wife who stays at home with their kids.  In 2014, she produced a line of impeccable ceramics, but then discontinued production despite a welcoming reception of her work.

One night, we went out to celebrate Jonic’s birthday.  While the guys discussed work, politics, and work politics, I asked Alisa about her ceramics background.  

“This is going to sound kind of bad,” she said, “but . . . I’m one of those people who’s good at everything.”

A year later, Jonic crashed at our place so he could commute to work while their house was being renovated (Alisa and the kids were with his parents).

I mentioned Alisa’s talent, and asked Jonic about her paintings and other work.  

“They’re incredible,” he said, “and she has no interest in art whatsoever.  She couldn’t care less.”

“What a waste!  I would kill for those skills.”

“Some people are like that," he mused.  "They have all the talent in the world, and they just don’t give a shit.”

We spent several summers in Taiwan while growing up, splitting time between Taipei, where Mom’s sister worked, and Yuanlin, where Mom’s parents lived in a typical multi-story apartment with balconies for dangling laundry, courtyards for storing useful-ish junk, and a kitchen for housing mini lemon ice creams, which I swiped pretty often.

Some days, we’d visit tourist spots like Taroko National Park, Xitou Nature Education Area, or the Aboriginal Culture Village.  Xitou was my favorite, with cool, shady paths leading through bamboo, ginkgos and green ponds.  At the forest’s exit, peddlers sold carved wooden animals with toothpick-holding pockets - useful for the nightly de-vegetableing of your teeth.

Ginkgo leaves remind me of Xitou, Mom, and summers in Taiwan.

Pickling ume looks time consuming. I once watched my mom’s biǎo jiě (cousin)(specifically, older female cousin on the maternal side) and her husband massage and brine the sour green apricots for a long time.  We’d plucked them earlier that day at a family farm deep in the woods.

The Japanese turn ume into soft poetic balls (Pantone 702 U-ish) that pair well with rice. The Taiwanese turn ume into dark, sweet, tart, prune-y things.

I came downstairs one morning and found this in the kitchen.

A giant pig ear.

In response to my questions, Mom said that she'd seen it at the market and was curious.

T

T is for
tattoo, tubetop, tête-à-tête, 
Taegu, Takoradi, Taki-Taki, 
tagine, turmeric, taleggio, 
takahe, talapoin, taeniodont, 
Twitter, texting, TubeYou, 
tarnish, tangle, takeover, 
Tarjé, tetherball, and T, Mr.  
For thisguy, it stands for thawing, TV time, and fish tacos.

As a kid, my main goal was to go unnoticed, so I could read books and eat Pringles or Hot Tamales or whatever joyous junk food I’d picked up during bike runs to Brookwood.

One day, as I strode through the family room on the way to my room, Dad stopped me.  

“Sit down," he said.  "Watch this.”  

He pressed “Play” on the VHS, and went to the piano room to read medical books.

For the next forty minutes, I watched a rhytidectomy (a facelift).  It looked like someone was making pizza and was stuck on the tomato sauce phase.

Dad yanked out one of my hairs.

“Ow!”  

“This is the correct way to floss,” he said, and demonstrated on his medical skull.

At the end of summer, Claire moved out of her beloved and superbly-priced Mission studio, since she was heading off to business school.  

She loaded her clothes, Craigslist-scored Le Corbusier chaise, and pre-med books into a rental car.  We drove down to our parents’ place in Rowland Heights.

I thought the drive was going well, when I heard her say over my voice, “Do you . . .  ever . . . stop . . . talking?”

On April 29th, my scanner died, so I went online for a new one.  

One store's home page read, “Passover Holiday Closing.  We are not accepting orders at this time.  Checkout will be available starting at 9:15 pm EST Sat April 30.”

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Mom came into the room with a bunch of bags (containing the usual - lightly used paper towels, lunch Tupperware and crusty bowls, crumpled magazine clippings, starchy crumbs, bobby pins, coins, Asian seed/tea/powdered grain drink mixes, Taiwanese newspaper articles, medical billing papers, cash in recycled envelopes, scribbled doodles and scraps of paper, a hairbrush or two, knitting stitch markers, receipts, stray hairs, paper clips, powder that had fallen out of the drink mix packets, assorted make-up from Target, lotion and maybe a dead gnat).

She noticed a package on the kitchen table.

“Something I can eat?”

“UPS pouches,” I replied.

She looked disenchanted.

“Nothing I can eat?”

“You’re welcome to eat them.”

“Bad child,” Mom said, and went upstairs.

“Why do you have to eat off of such stupid little plates?” Petra barked at me.

“It defeats the purpose of a small plate if you keep filling up the plate!” Claire added.

Sisters like to point things out.

“Italo, what do you think of this skirt?”  my friend Rika asked her four-year old.  Rika is a clothing designer.

“Hm, nice . . . hides your fat legs,” Italo said.

Chupa called Costco to see if they had a certain piece of luggage in stock at the Atwater warehouse.

“It may have been discontinued,” the customer service rep told him.  “May I place you on a brief hold?”

“Sure.”  

Chupa listened to hold ads for a few minutes.

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Occasionally, I watch a movie with Mom.  

I’m nearsighted, so I sit close to the TV, with a couple of blankets and a mug of hot water nearby.  Mom spreads out on the couch, like a pillow.

No matter how good the movie is, she falls asleep.  I turn around every ten minutes or so to check.

During the lunch-to-dinner lull at Sushi Teruya, Franco (Manager #3) and I would chat at the hostess desk.  The ringing phone or managerial duties interrupted us every few minutes.

One afternoon, we stood in silence.  

Franco finally spoke.

“She might be the hottest girl on earth," he said, "but somewhere out there, there’s a guy who’s sick of her.”

Chupa (who has requested a “non-normal” alias) stood in the kitchen eating ginger einkorn cookies. 

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“It’s wonderful and it’s horrible,” Ben said.

I had said something to him about how awesome it was that he and his wife were so successful -

“People say that to us all the time,” he said.  

“But the truth is . . . it’s amazing . . . and it’s awful.”

There was a three second pause between each phrase, since he was drunk.

“It’s magical

and it’s abysmal.

It’s fantastic

and it's hell."

He seemed to be referring to their marriage.

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Rummaging Region