Potions

Proportions,
Portions and potions:
A dynamic, yet unknown, equilibrium.
To shift and begin
to be who we'll become.

Come now the sun is rising.
our homogeneous mixture is not the solution.
We're a bit mixed up, a tad undone.
Come now, but don't rush
as there's no one to outrun.

Come now, we've begun
with potions of portions in proportion.

Sicklical

It's sicklical; it really is
How babies have babies who have babies

It's sicklical; it really is
How babies become parents but not grown-ups

It's sicklical; it really is
How parents fail children who fail theirs

It's sicklical; it really is
How people are hostile and closed off

Take a stick and stick it in that cycle
Stop the stationary rotation

Jounce the cyclists so they fall
so they scrape their knees and elbows
so they never want to ride again

Search for alternative transportation:
Try a bike or bus or walking.
Don't walk by the sicklical biker--push him off

Laminated Lamentation

Today, this lamentation is laminated.
It's stiff and the corners cut.

The marker's marks erase
and nothing seems to change it (lamentably).

And yet tomorrow, which is now today,
everything is different, everything has changed.

The inflexible, non-biodegradable, twinky-preservative-esque plastic
has melted away like the candy paper wrappings on Chinese candy.

Hope is very easy in retrospect.

Work Hard with a Vengeance

This summer I am interning with the consulting company ZS Associates in their San Mateo office. My fellow San Mateo interns are Berkeley students who are on the semester system. Thus, they finished school in mid-May and went through training/started work two weeks ago. The LA office has interns from UCLA who have the same school calendar as Stanford. After flying to SF from Chile on Monday, I flew from San Jose to LA to do training with the other interns.

Like Miss Miley, I hopped off the plane at LAX (yes, I was even wearing a cardigan but unfortunately not rockin' my cowboy kicks). Instead of thinking about Brittany and JZ, I wrote the following during the cab ride:
“I feel like John McClane when he lands in LAX in Die Hard. He knows where he needs to go, but he knows little about what to expect when he arrives—hopefully my first day of work will not be quite as exciting has John’s Christmas party. I think that’s a safe bet because my taxi driver is not nearly as cool as Argyle. Since I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to “take off [my] shoes and socks [and] then walk around on the rug barefoot and make fists with [my] toes,” I decided to instead put a 1988 penny in my shoe to relax and for good luck.”

Shortly after writing that piece, we pull up to the Fox Plaza where ZS Associate’s LA office is located. For those of you who don’t know, Fox Plaza is the same building as Die Hard’s Nakatomi Tower! Yep. I know. And get this, training was on the top floor!

Cymbalism

Clash

A distinct timbre
that warns like "timber"

A decision
or a lesson

that resonates
and reverberates

Clash

Growing up is an odd thing

I've never been much of a reader of junk books. Garbage like Babysitters' Club, Twilight, and Gossip Girl have never held my attention nor been of much interest to me. Rather, my zone-out-over-Christmas-or-summer-break books have always fallen in the Amy Tan/Secret Life of Bees category. They're easy reads yet they have more than one layer to sift through and I don't feel my brain rotting away while I flip through the pages.

One such book, which I'd argue is of a slightly lower caliber than Ms. Tan's books, is Love Walked in by Marisa De Los Santos (a Delawart). This book is the prequel to the book Belong to Me, which I read after my mom. She bought the book because the cover featured several sets of rainboots lined up in a row and we're total suckers for that kind of advertising!

Anyway, in that book the protagonist makes a comment about how French women always look put together. She specificially says that they can quickly tie a silk scarf around their neck and it falls in that perfect-you-could-never-achieve-this-flawlessly-careless-look-in-a-million-years kind of way. Well, this afternoon, while walking back from the Stanford center, I bought a silk(ish) scarf and I am going to try to achieve that look.

For those of you who don't know, this is a big step for me. Let me give you a bit of history:
For the majority of high school, I sported jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt, which apparently aren't couture or high fashion. When I went to Tahoe over Christmas break junior year of high school, my sister and best friend Jaclyn raided my closet, removed everything they dubbed "unacceptable," and then made a chart of everything I could and could not wear together a la Granimals. While I did not appreciate this blatant display of paternalism and disrespect for private property, I did appreciate the helpful/interventionist sentiment behind it. It's funny because come junior year of high school, my little sister Emma confessed that she now understood why I wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and T-shirt everyday--junior year is crazy busy and sometimes there's just not time to focus on fashion details.

Now, beginning senior year of high school and freshman year of college, I tried to start wearing scarves. No, not tiny silk scarves around my neck. I simply tried to wear normal scarves. However, while trying to wear these fashion accessories, I faced a problem. This adjustment process felt exactly like when I first started to wear a bra. That is, when I first started wearing a bra, all I could think was "oh my god, oh my god, I'm wearing a bra." And I felt that way until my older friend Lauren told me to try sleeping in it to grow accusotmed, which actually worked. So, my initial attempts at wearing a scarf were highly distracting because all I could think was "oh my god, oh my god, I'm wearing a scarf! I wonder if it's falling properly? I wonder if everybody thinks it's weird that I'm putting extra effort in today? Should I try to make the scarf perfectly symmetric or should I go for casual asymmetry?" Basically, wearing a scarf was too stressful, so I abandoned it.

Then, something miraculous happened! I went to London/Paris over spring break last year and it was cold. I brought a scarf and needed to wear it. With the help of Jaclyn and Laurel, I learned how to wrap/tie it so it looked nice but not too planned and, with a bit of practice, I became accustomed to scarving it up. All junior year, I have sported scarves left and right with hardly a second thought. Now, the scarves I've worn have primarily been for utilitiarian purposes of warmth. However, I am now feeling confident enough to try the purely-for-show scarf. We'll see how it goes--wish me luck!

Ode to my Pink Umbrella

Ode to my pink umbrella
meant to shelter me from storms
meant to keep my body dry
that my body might stay warm

Ode to my pink umbrella
carried in pocket or purse
small, compact, transportable
useful when weather turns worse

Ode to my pink umbrella
I´m sorry for having left
you on the floor of the cab
by means of Anne-on-Anne theft

Ode to my pink umbrella
I hope you are not alone
I hope you´ve been adopted,
used and loved in your new home