Ong Xuyen

I already knew his time was almost up when I called my mom earlier today. She said he was no longer responsive. I was restless all day as I tried to get some of my thesis work done. Wanting to get out of the house, I asked Nelson if he wanted to go to Black Bear Diner.

Sitting down a flood of memories hit me, and I realized I had already shared my last meal with Ong Xuyen before I left for the beginning of the Winter quarter. Ong Xuyen loved to eat out, especially at diner-type restaurants. When I was first able to drive I remember taking him to IHOP all the time. As I grew older I discovered different places to take him--from Harry's Cafe, to Doug's Mainstreet Grill, and more recently Spires. Nothing fancy, really, he just loved to go out and eat with us.

Sunday Paper

Good ol' Sunday coffee & paper

In case you did not notice, today's high schoolers were all born in the twenty first century.

Boy is it easy to think that we are a millennium apart.

How much more can be said about the "millennial generation?"

Luckily for them, their story is largely still unwritten.

If, however, you look at the stories being written day by day, it is enough to give at least this rambler some pause.

Sitting here in a coffee shop, attempting to put in yet more hours of work this week, I took the time to pick up an LA Times that was sitting on the table.

With nostalgia over the high school, LA Times-Award-winning, journalism years I flipped immediately to the second page.

Jan Ewell¹had told us usually the juicy stuff is on the inside flap of the page, where people are usually too lazy to venture to.

Here is a summary of headline-worthy newsbits²

• Chinese leaders plan how to rally their economy, step back corruption reform
• Exxon Mobil screwed the icecaps and coastal cities to pad their pockets
• Allegedly drunk driving woman kills 4
• Obama agrees with majority of Americans that standardized testing is stupid
• Naval academy brings back celestial navigation because hackers

Then I logged in to my laptop, and the first thing I saw pop on my Outlook was my Al Jazeera and KPCC news feeds.  Here is more from this past week:

• Black churches burning 
• Police shoot another innocent man
• Rape and violence up in civil warring South Sudan
• Swedish school sword rampage

Worked myself to the
bones this week.

So are these the headlines we write day in and day out?  

For most of us, no, we live a mundane life.

We work our 9 to 5's and go about our day in relative peace.

Except on the 405--there we question the doctrine of human dignity.

But how do we avoid becoming simultaneously the most connected and least connected generation of all time?

Am I just the voice of our mothers and fathers crying out, "do better than I did?"

Do we rise up to change our social and political structures?  Do we work the system?  Do we grow jaded, give up, and wait for the next generation to "fix things?"

For the uninformed, Pope Francis has declared an extraordinary Jubilee year of Mercy³.

Let's make mercy more than something we talk about.

It begins December 8th, 2015.

The Year of Mercy.

Can it change the world?

Yes.  Mercy can change the world.

Will it change the world?

That is a headline you must decide to write.

Though I will undoubtedly stumble, you can consider me all in.

NOTES

1. Janet Ewell advised our high school journalism crew, which I was a part of from 2003 to 2005.  We won best overall at the Los Angeles Times 5-county competition for high school 4 page spread.  She got LA Times Sports writer Bill Plaschke to come and mentor us.  Aside from journalism, she was always a great encouragement and advocate for me as a young man of faith.
2. Links to LA Times and Al Jazeera news sites provided for your curiousity!
3. A jubilee year has biblical roots and is essentially a special year for remission of sins.  They typically fall in 50 year intervals, but this one does not so it is "extraordinary."

Letting go

I think this is my biggest difficulty. It's why I've taken myself so seriously, it's why I get angered easily, and now it's why I feel so overcome with sorrow. I have trouble letting go--of the past, of the present, of the future.

Why do I try to live with fists clenched so tight? What reason is there for holding on, even when all holding on does is make me sad?

Sometimes it feels...

like all the heart I have is never going to be enough.

Accountability

Just trying to keep myself responsible and my tasks in order:

- CDPH Memo: POU for As/Nitrate Capital and O&M costs vs Bottled Water (due Thursday)

- Green Design: Finalize Materials Report, Start and finish Cost Estimate Report (due tomorrow)

- O. Chem: HW#4 due June 1, Report due June 9

- Water Quality: HW#4 due June 6, 10 page proposal due June 9

Today is May 24...

Help me climb this mountain, don't let me fall.

Let the waves crash...

Taken from a post by a Redditor named GSnow:

Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gorged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

a fire in my soul

God, you've put a fire in my soul. With each and every person who's come into my life, you teach me a lesson, new or old.

I had another dream about my God father James Le again. It was like he had never left. I imagined him a little bit older, a little more lines on his face, the hair on his head a bit more thin.

It seems when I dream about him, it's because I am stressed out, or even fearful--afraid that I have taken the wrong path. Afraid that I had left my family and friends behind for too long, or perhaps, that I would just end up a failure. But those dreams I have are bittersweet medicine. I wake up with a twang in my heart from the longing of loved ones I can no longer be near, but I grow in courage, in resolve.

James taught me many lessons. Some of them were spoken, but the magnitude and direction of his life speaks mountains to me. It's a bit cheesy, but these are the words his life spoke to me:



Thanks, Pops, for the lessons and the courage to go on. I miss you, but we'll have our time again some day.