Art & Dining

We hauled Tung's family's dining set from the townhouse to our dining room. The set was originally manufactured in Viet Nam and shipped here. The wood is very heavy, cool to the touch, and has mother-of-pearl inlay.


Here are some details of the mother-of-pearl inlay on the chair backing.



We hung the seascape painting above the sofa in the guest sitting room partition of the dining room.

That media-generating box called a "TV" that I never watch has been hooked up and is receiving stations. Note wire-hiding thingies on the wall, courtesy of Tung and his dad.

Slow and Steady

The leftover repair work is winding down to an end, and we must be running out of steam (and money), so we've been taking it easy lately. Spring brings the flowers around the house to bloom, and here are some fresh-cut calla lilies from my front yard:



The kitchen cupboards are starting to be furnished with some essential tableware:


And cookware:



Along with the roof, we got a new skylight to replace the old, leaking, sun-brittled one. It's more domed that the old one we have, which, due to lack of valley flashings and poor placement, was a huge ceiling leak waiting to happen.



Here's the view of the skylight from inside the house. It helps bring natural lighting to our little dining area near the kitchen.



Tung put up the rod and curtains for the guest bedroom. The sheer layer is the first layer. His mom is custom-sewing all the curtains in our house.


It's exciting to gradually get the finished pieces and put them up.


Over the weekend, Tung and his dad mounted our flat-screen HDTV on the wall above the fireplace. Due to the lack of studs, we don't have much choice over the placement. We still need to hook up the cables to make it work.



Here's a warm and homely touch for our leather couch, often too cold in the winter. The TeleNav blanket also adds a nice, contrasting splash of bold color to the muted tones of the family room.



And what better way to spend an evening after the house work than to take a little snooze?

The Secrets a House Knows

Eighteen years spent in my current house, and I have come to know the most minute details about it. I can navigate the darkened hallways in the night, find my way to the kitchen water cooler without turning on any lights, careful where I am most likely to trip on a wayward shoe on the floor. The hallway light switch gets stuck when flipped on, the Master bathroom shower drips if not turned off a certain way. Rainy days, the droplets of water falling down the square aluminum downspout make magnified thumping sounds. Cars swish by along the busy street, sending up streams of water from their tires. At night, the sensor light mounted at the front splashes rays of bright yellow on my wall whenever a stray cat walks by; through closed eyelids, I can tell when it turns itself off when my vision darkens a shade. Sunny mornings, golden sunlight ekes through the slits in my pink fabric blinds, and I wake to the chirping of birds playing tag in the evergreen trees outside my window.

In spring, the plum blossoms burst into a robe of snow-white. In summer, one of the best places to be is angled underneath the big ceiling vent that blows air conditioning onto the maple-laminate floor. In autumn, the apple tree ripens, two varieties, one small and golden, the other striped red—trunks entwined, mated for years; the deciduous persimmon tree shows off its leaves of orange, brown, and red, like fire on the branches. In winter, a throw on the leather sofa helps warm those inclined to sit late through the night watching the big TV in the family room. The heat comes on after one slight clicking sound.

Soon I will move to another house. Built in 1970, it’s surely accumulated its own secrets and tales. The old woman who lived here before loved to garden, brightening the front- and back yards with white calla lilies, cream-petaled daisies streaked with lavender, purple bougainvillea, beauty roses, mint leaves and chives. Fruit trees stagger the backyard: orange, persimmon, apple, pluots, plum. She hung her laundry to dry on clotheslines taut across the backyard; she cooked modest meals in the small kitchen. But she fell and broke her hip, and so the house was put up for sale. Now, when I pace its grounds, getting acquainted with the unfamiliar smell of old lives and fresh paint, discovering the creak at the threshold of the front door, I wonder about my new house’s secrets, entwined with hers.

Why is there a pencil sharpener welded to the hallway-coat-closet-turned-pantry? Did she tutor once, or had grandchildren who sat at the glass-topped square table, gripping pencils and crayons with their chubby young hands?


Why is there a stack of picture frame covers on the high storage shelf in the garage? Did she paint once? Collect art? Transport it back and forth?



Why did they build a back porch that overshadows the small window of the guest bedroom, cloaking it in cool darkness? Did she once cry in its secluded corners? Did her laughter echo through the hallway? Did she stand underneath the lone skylight near the kitchen, angling up her head to see the sun pass across the sky? Did her quiet humming and soft songs float through the garden as she worked in the company of the sparrows that nested in the nearby cypress trees?

I may never unearth these secrets of the past, but as I close the door to one house and open the door to another, I will have my own memories to create, my own stories to tell. And, years from now, I will build up a new treasure trove of secrets for this house to hold in its hearth, saving the memory of a long burnt-out flame for a new owner to wonder about further down the road.

Analogies

I was always bad at chemistry because I have trouble learning what I can’t visualize. The world of molecules, ions, periodic tables, and formulaic balancing was lost on me—I couldn’t see any of it, so as a result, nothing made sense. In aikido, I would grasp onto kernels of wisdom from various training partners to extract meaning from initially confusing techniques. Here are a few that I’ve filed away to refer back to:

First bokken suburi: To avoid using excessive arm strength while swinging the sword, therefore wearing yourself out faster, first “squash a bug on the tabletop with the hilt,” then cut down and extend.

Ikkyo: To keep the ikkyo lock, “keep the Freddy Kreuger fingers pointing up.”

Nikkyo Omote: The hand change is “like the axle of a train wheel staying vertical while going round,” or “like holding a cup without spilling the water.”

Nikkyo Ura: To keep the torque on uke’s wrist, keep the palm facing you, “like looking into a mirror.”

Sankyo: The hand change is “like peeling back the layers of an onion.”

Yonkyo Ura: Keep uke’s arm extended once in the yonkyo hold and “trace the radius of the circle before tracing the diameter” to bring down to the pin.

Kotegaeshi: When turning uke over for the pin, one hand holds the wrist while the other pushes the elbow to uke’s nose. Then turn the arm “like a steering wheel” instead of pulling on it.

Iriminage: The free hand that takes down uke goes up and over the chin, “like a wave breaking over a rock.”

Shihonage: During the takedown, “cut down like a sword.”

Tenchi-nage: Upper arm rises straight up from uke’s center “like a dragon to the heavens,” lower arm spirals to the earth “like a nautilus.”

Shomenuchi-to-Kaiten-nage-to-pin: Instead of grabbing uke’s arm and using force, clinch it to the body “like holding a baby.”

Katate-dori: Move the caught wrist off to the side “like a sword tip slicing outward from uke’s belly center,” or “like wiping a table.”

Kokyu Ho: When extending in kokyu, lift the hands “like drinking from a big jug of water (glug-glug-glug).” (“Glug-glug-glug” courtesy of Sensei).

Morote-dori Kokyu Dosa: First open the palms “like a flower blooming,” or “like opening a book.”

High Falls

It feels like sacrificing the body to save the wrist, a sudden wrench as I clasp tight to Sempai’s forearm and throw my head down to look back up at him, my leg going up and over. For a second I am airborne, none of my body touching the ground, tethered only by the hand still hanging onto him as he flips me, my earlier-caught wrist unwinding around the tight torque. The world goes topsy-turvy, whizzing by like in a forward roll, but with a stronger adrenaline rush from the momentary freedom of earth. And then gravity pulls me back to the ground, my free hand slapping the mat to soften the impact, the side of my thigh slamming against the mat’s hard surface.

“Look up and over,” Sempai coaches, “up and over.” Out of a dozen tries, I do maybe three decent ones. The other times, I don’t put in enough spring during take-off, or my body rotates wrong in mid-air, forcing me to land awkwardly and hard.

“More?” he asks, and I say, “Again,” going for the forearm, getting the feel of the pendulum motion. We first do it on the count of three, so that I can learn the rhythm and timing so essential to such acrobatics. Then he flips me on the count of one, alternating left, right, left. Forced to strive for balance, I don’t get the chance to learn it well first on one side.

Neck sore. Arms sore. Huge, welting purple bruises on the sides of my thighs from landing hard. The days following high-fall practice, I pay for it, limping along in my daily routine. Soreness has not been a foreign feeling since I re-joined aikido, but what amazes me is the various places in the body I can feel it, like I am working out a different set of muscles every time. Always learning something new. Looking up and over to the immediate goal ahead, tentatively testing out these new wings until I can truly learn to fly.

Anniversary

Exactly one year ago on this day March 3rd, on a similarly overcast, lightly-sprinkling evening when early nightfall had robbed the last brightness from the sun, I wandered along the grounds of a school, looking for some sign of people practicing aikido. My dojo shares the wrestling gym of a private high school, also on the same land as a different private elementary school, with a small gated entry that’s easy to miss. I always kid over the irony of working as a Technical Writer for a GPS company, providing instructions for people to navigate on the road, but forever getting lost myself. “Always find your way,” our tagline boasts, but of course, with me driving to an unfamiliar locale, it usually takes a couple of tries. This hidden dojo, without any signs up to indicate the various turns people should be making once on the school parking lot, was no exception. A running joke is that finding it requires the equivalent commitment of seeking those old-men-on-the-mountain martial arts masters to commence your training.


After finally driving to the correct parking lot, facing the wrong gate, and placing several calls, I got Sensei to find me and lead me into the brightly lit dojo from the evening darkness. He was saying something when we crossed the threshold, but I had already focused my full attention on the scene before me: people in white gi jackets and black hakamas practicing together, grabbing wrists, rolling, and pinning, this artistic dance that I had not seen for a very long time. I took in the smell of the place, the foam-rubber zebra mats, the clean, soapy bodies, the scent of individuals rising with body heat into the air. The spirit of the place, the sounds of ki-ai’s and rustling clothing, rushed forward to encompass me like fog that seeped into my pores.

Sensei introduced me to the head Sempai to work with me for that first session. I re-learned tai-no-henko, trying to get it right. I did sit-falls and forward rolls. I coaxed my body to remember these long-forgotten movements, once so familiar, still sitting dormant in my muscle memory. For five years since I quit aikido, I got sidetracked in life’s journey, even a little lost. Reentering the art, I found my way again, and on that night, I came home.

Jiyu Waza

Hanging out after class one day, my new san-kyu belt around my abdomen, I suddenly found myself in a jiyu-waza session with three guys, initiated by a Sempai. Jiyu waza would be on my next test, still a long distance away, but it felt appropriate--if not initially intimidating--to start practicing it. We went slow, the four of us spread across the ranks. The attacks were less deliberate; the takedowns and pins were drawn out and exaggerated so we could first get a feel for this freestyle way of training.

When people are coming at you, brandishing shomenuchi or yokomenuchi or mune-tsuki, seizing your arms in morote-dori or katate-dori or ryote-dori, your body takes over. You learn to move from instinct, drawing upon the familiar techniques repeated a hundred times over in structured keiko, class training. Maybe your blends aren’t as effective, your timing a little off, you get out of the way a fraction of a second too late, and your pins are still sloppy. But jiyu-waza teaches you the concept of moving on your feet, how to go right into a technique and follow through. You learn which ones you favor, which ones you don’t use nearly enough. You learn not to freeze. And you learn the fluidity of aikido when forced to do it in constant motion, how the footwork so ingeniously works itself out as you trace spirals in the air, circles on the floor.

This was how I imagined martial arts to be, fluid and spontaneous, a dozen different attacks met with a dozen appropriate blends and effective takedowns. It seemed like magic, how the building blocks of my almost-daily training have finally allowed me this. It was the first time I experienced this, an art and not a fight, freeing the body for creative expression, suspending the convoluted and self-restricting ways of the mind to allow the soul to soar.