sushipanda

Today is the 5th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

On my way home from work today, I got a call from Wil. It was 3 am in DC when he called, and I was surprised as anyone who receives a call from someone else during the darkest hours of their day. Turns out he had trouble sleeping, unable to prevent his mind from ruminating on that horrible day.

“I’ve been thinking about that day, about how I’ve changed in the past five years.”

During the same time one year ago, I wrote briefly about what was going on in my head when I first heard the news of the attacks on my way to work that day. While chatting with Wil, he mentioned that he had blacked most of the memories of that day out of his head. I, on the other hand, remember everything with a crisp lucidity that has maybe only attached itself to a select handful of other important memories. He mentioned that he did remember going to the candlight vigil later that week at Dolores Park, which led us to talk about the “Candle of Life.” This story thus goes:

Wil, Angela, and I brought our candles out to the highest point of Dolores Park and just sat there, watching other San Franciscans gather both where we were, as well as near the bottom of the hill. This was Craigslist at its most efficient. A few people brought guitars but just laid next to them, staring up at the sky, perhaps thinking that the moment didn’t need any musical accompaniment. Everyone brought candles. As the sun set, while overlooking downtown San Francisco, the three of us lit our candles and sat quietly. I’ll never know what either Wil or Angela was thinking, but for me I was marveling at how throngs of people who never met each other could find a spot to congregate, and do nothing but just sit. I do remember thinking that all the candles looked really pretty scattered all throughout the park, and then thinking that maybe I wasn’t supposed to think they were pretty. Maybe I was supposed to just be sad.

Somewhere during the course of that evening, I decided I didn’t want to let go of that feeling of togetherness. San Francisco is a pretty warm place, not temperature-wise but people-wise, and even then I was feeling a strange communal warmth that I didn’t really want to shake. So I told my two friends that I was going to let my candle burn all the way down. I dubbed it the “Candle of Life,” and I balanced it on my lap as Angela drove us to Safeway to get us food, then cradled it through the grocery aisles. Back at home, I set it down on the coffee table as we joined the others at our house to watch the 9/11 “Tribute to Heroes” telethon. Afterwards, we found ourselves talking about our feelings, much as we had done the past few days as very few of us went to work in the days following the 11th. Then, I went into my room and laid the candle next to my bed. It still had a long way to go, which was fitting since I had chosen such a dramatic name for it.

The next thing I knew, my entire dresser (one of those cheap Tupperware type roller-dressers that I had picked up somewhere) was on fire. It was almost 4 am in the morning, and my entire room was flickering in the glow of the “Fire of Life.” I stumbled out into the kitchen and somehow got my hands on the smallest pot in our arsenal of cookware, and then proceeded to fill it up with water from the tap, all the while watching the hallway grow brighter and brighter. Finally, with the pot three quarters full, I ran into the room and sprayed my dresser with enough water to cook a packet of ramen.

For all the good it did, I might as well have spit into it.

As I ran back, blabbering something in my half-confused, half-asleep state, Wil rumbled up from his room upstairs, saw what was going on and ran into my room, then took off his shirt and with about four huge smacks snuffed the fire out. The whole time, I was still in the kitchen, still with the tiny little pot in my hand, still trying to fill it up. Where there once was a huge orange glow, there now was nothing but a huge cloud of smoke and the putrid smell of burning plastic. Will, shirtless and clearly agitated at having to save the life of a roommate who had a working heater in his room, stumbled back downstairs without saying a word.

And that is my “Candle of Life” story, which in the ensuing days became re-titled as the “How the Candle of Life Almost Turned Into the Candle of Death” story. The moral of both stories is that even in times of great distress, of great sadness, of anxiety and fear and confusion, one thing will remain a constant in the fabric of our great country: I will also be a stupid, fucking idiot.

Thanks for saving my life, Wil. Thanks for giving me a call today and to remind me how young we all were back then. Thanks to Harsha, Joe, Jason, Mike, Sabrina, Angela, Annie, Homer, Jerry, and all the other good friends with whom I huddled together during that terrible week that will never be completely wiped from our memories.

And as promised, here is a mention of Wil’s zest for life…and an odd addendum to that is when he first mentioned that I should write about said zest in my blog, I had this strange image of Wil holding a bar of Zest soap, with all this water squirting out of the soap, just like in those old Zest commercials. I guess whenever I think about Wil and his passion for living, I think of soap. And you know what? There’s something oddly fitting about that.

Here are some thoughts…

- I was complaining to some of my pals on messenger today that I was so incredibly bored, and then midway I realized that it wasn’t that there was a dearth of things for me to do, it was just that I was too lazy to do them. For instance, It’s taken me about 6 hours to actually muster enough energy to log on here and begin blogging, even though I had been thinking about doing so all morning and afternoon. It got me thinking: everyone and their pet camel know that I’m prone to extreme bouts of laziness (if you can call a lifetime a ’bout’), but am I at the point now where I’ve reached my own personal nadir of stasis! Is it possible that I cannot get any lazier than I am at this point in my life?

*Given the fact that after I wrote the above paragraph, I sprawled across my bed to rest for 10 minutes indicates that the answer is a distinct “yes!”*

- I was at Chace’s yesterday afternoon eating Xiao Yang Sheng Jian dumplings (小杨生煎), and as the fatty juiced dripped down my chin I noticed Chace sitting at the dinner table, quietly staring out the window. I asked him what he was thinking about, and he replied: “How to get rich.”

When I stare out the window I usually think about…well, nothing at all, really. And here my good friend was actually using his brain cells for something useful. Something that had value. And so I stared out the window with Chace, trying to see if we combined our brainpower, we’d come up with a sure way to get rich and live the lives that we all wanted for ourselves (him hunting turkeys in the back-woods of North Carolina with a bazooka, and me staring out the window, thinking about nothing in particular but dressed in one of many Armani suits and gold-encrusted slippers). And here’s what I came up with:

One of you dear readers, please invent something that is so awesome that we can sell tens of millions of them. Then give the idea to Chace and I and we will take care of the rest. Ready? Set? Go!

- On the eve of another NFL season that I can only observe from a distance (and a fantasy football season that I will surely lose because by the time I wake up for work on Monday, all the good players have already been picked up by Harry), I leech off someone else in cyberspace to pay tribute to the one man who made me decide to be a cursed Detroit Lions fan. Yes, the same Lions who have the worst record in the NFL the past five years, and who hire assistant coaches who like to go to Wendy’s in the nude.

- I was passing out in the taxi on my way back from Barbarossa last night when I suddenly thought of something from “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” I’m not the only one who thinks that this is one of the greatest films to come along in the past few years, and those of you who know me well know that I often pop in the DVD when I’m alone and questioning the sanity of the concept of men and women loving each other (which is why movies about men and their dogs are always so happy).

So while I’m drifting in and out of consciousness, I think back to the last memory that Joel has of Clementine, right before it gets wiped from his mind. She whispers to him “Meet me in Montauk.” And for those of you who paid attention from the very beginning, you know that they will. At the time, it seemed the perfect way to bring the viewer back to the start of the film, and makes the story together.

However, I realize that while Clementine saying this to Joel explains how Joel can wake up the next morning and have the strange impulse to go to Montauk, it doesn’t explain how Clementine can be there as well! Unless in her memory of their first meeting, Joel requests the same thing of her. And if that’s the case, the the entire premise of the film is based on the idea of destiny. Or unbelievable coincidence, which can often be interpreted as destiny.

I’m not a big believer of destiny, especially when it comes to people (i.e. the “we were destined to be together forever” drivel). Does this new discovery change how much I love the film. After thinking about it, probably not. Apparently, I’m a believer that when you love something or love someone, you love everything about them, including these types of gaping holes that tarnish one’s perception of perfection. Makes sense to me.

Ok, writing that just now felt like the most productive and substantial thing I’ve done all day.

As always, the fates have it out for unsuspecting bears.

After almost three months, I finally decided to get back on the wagon…the wagon being my dear bicycle Julie, of course. Three months: that’s nearly 12 weeks that I haven’t ridden Julie to work. Of course, I had very good reasons. Summer days in Shanghai usually make me feel like I’m some soft, gelatinous pupa stuck in a cocoon made of spandex with no air-holes. For those of you who’ve never been baby insects, I’m trying to convey the sense that it’s DAMN HOT. The prospect of peeling myself off the seat on the shuttle bus didn’t appeal to me, so Julie sat neglected in her usual spot next to the dining room table.

Of course, on the day I finally wheel her out, excited as a puppy about to hump and old woman’s leg, what happens? The heavens open up and fling big, fat raindrops on my part of Shanghai. And of course, with my wretched history of always carrying an umbrella when it doesn’t rain and never having one when it does, I soon found myself drenched to the dual core. I’m talking shirt, pants, socks, shoes, panties…everything ended up completely wringable. It got to a point where I could not get any wetter as I pedaled furiously down Yan’an road. In fact, after I parked my bike, I slowly sauntered toward the building, while everyone around me was scrambling to dodge the rain. I felt like I was in one of those movies where there’s a big explosion and everyone starts screaming and running away, except for the bad-ass hero who keeps walking straight without ever looking back (see “Desperado” and “Syriana”). Anyway, that was me today. Of course, I didn’t look nearly as cool as those movie heroes, since I was totally sopping wet and carrying a big, dorky Intel backpack with my lunchbox inside. But still, it was pretty cool.