Bye, mama! Have a good day today!

clamber clamber clamber downthestairs 
look back up; she's still there.

Bye, baby! Drive safe, don't you drive fast cause you're running late now. Drive safe, I love you.

I love you, 
she speaks with her eyes. 
Drive safe,
she says with her lips.

I love you!
I say out loud; wave big and lovingly, 
send an air-blown kiss up the stairs back to her. I am a knight-errant princess leaving my queen mama in the castle. Dragons and briar bushes, here I come.

And she lets me go, into the world like she always does, 
feeling the pull of the universe drawing me out and away from her, as it always does.
She worries, but doesn't tell me so, 

except with her eyes
except with those eyes!

And it's these moments of admirable self-control that I feel her universeful of unmitigated love for an undeserving child. Slip out the door, clutching my heart, all overwhelmed with gratefulness and the chokey feelings creeping up the back of my throat cause my chest cavity is heaving itself in love-in-response and bewilderment again. I don't deserve all this. What love is this?!

The only true way to give my thanks is to leave the fortress, slay those dragons.
And learn to speak Love with my eyes, too --
Pass on the love overflow.

meditations on the messiah

from Cynthia Ozick's  The Messiah of Stockholm

he was the messiah and he wasn't. risen from some dead, blessed, and cursed. his father was the most elaborate figment of his imagination; his sister was a fake. stars that mirror one another; windows that pour puddles of life-giving light squares onto the hardwood floor. books that become the saving grace of a town -- only to break down [clangings and clatterings] into the birth of a tiny, hope-brimming bird with a piece of hay in its fragile beak.


edit: 4/9/14 nope Jesus did not have a sister; different messiah hehehoho

I am at the library hing

My mama gets cuter and cuter every day.

Dear Jason; Love, Madison

My dad is very good at vocal inflections, almost comically so. He'll talk himself silly on the telephone with a native-born American, all his "Yep!"s and "Uhhhh huh!"s in all the right places, so vocally and inflectiony. Sometimes I pause in my room and listen to his too-loud voice booming through our whole second story, as he talks about "Yeah, that'll be grrrreat!"s and "Perfect, just perfect"s with those American friends and comrades. ["Good guy, very good guy"]

It's really amazing what he's done with his life - he came out of the womb wanting to be a mechanical engineer, and has never looked back. Breaking radios, fixing radios, dreaming about airplane models and taking anything apart that's take-apartable with a screwdriver, he took himself through college and supported little siblings, too, as the too-young head of household he became when his dad died. [Cannot imagine. I cannot even imagine.]

He fell in love with a lady who fell back in love with him (never knowing what a temper he was hiding behind that goofy grin and big 80s hair), and became a dad to two little girls with whom he also fell irrevocably in lifelong-love.

Brought them all over to the Land of the Dreamy Freedom with all the shiny hopes and sparkly eyes and well-groomed hair of a man recently promoted, and began his great American adventure, working every day on that particular Korean-American "Yep!"py accent my sister and I always used to tease him about. Along the way were un-rollable "rrr"s and other immigrant woes; jobs lost and jobs gained, lots of fighting with the lady and crying with the babies. But those babies are ladies now, and all his ladies dote on him, even especially when they're making fun of his American inflections.

You will never read this, and even if you do, will never fully comprehend my language in all its topsy-turvy lovefulness, but that's the tragi-comedy of our story, dad. Thank you for making this confusion happen, and you have to stick around for a long time, okay? so I can tell you in little bits and pieces all the things (un)explained here.

sassfrass trio

2013

Despite all my self-conscious griping about photography: 

2013 through (mostly) my camera lens, (almost) all in chronological order.

Apparently it was about people and different places.

And food. 

Though actually, the three all just different aspects of one, whole experience. 

setting a-sail. via plane. ahoy, France!

late-night tea and ketchup time with Diego and the host brother in franglish

Valenbici, Valencia

"majestic" comes to mind

te amo

soulful-sad coffee date with soulful-sad french girl who opened up to me about her soulful-sad things like it was no big deal

22nd birthday apple piecake in Lyon

Cristian in Granada. Those olives were somehow so delicious.

crazy-laughing with fellow Morocco-adventure-rs

bubble tea

amie de voyage

"the Eiffel Tower is magical because..."

rebel in London

a year of so many photobombs

but also of so many lovely photo'ed memories

"you have to look through the leetle viewfinder"

live, laugh, love,
and wink unabashedly

baguette-under-arm: check

two dreamers in Perouges

brunch fiends

La Grande Mosquée de Lyon

we can't help it. behind-the-scenes at a tapas bar in Montpellier

wine by the liter 2 euros, chit-chat about life and love, totally free

celebrating open hearts, open doors, being scared to death of things that turn out to be nothing, etc.
Montpellier

sunshine in Marseille

beer on a cafe terrace: we talked of movies I didn't know.

such unfiltered love for those leaves
Aix-en-Provence: "tu m'inspires"

fearless jaywalkers
Aix

"Comment savoir si c'est l'art ou pas?"
Nice, France

refuge from...homelessness.
It sounds like I'm dramatizing it,
and I am. hahaha
Nice, France

Strasbourg, France

Zuhause in Deutschland

unexpected friendships abound
Tuebingen, Germany

Lake Bodensee

bye bye sadness
Tuebingen

I am the master of picnic lunches.
Amsterdam, Netherlands

the most colorful, the most tragic

high spirits, whiskey appreciation
Edinburgh, Scotland

what was it about this trip that made us sit up all night and talk about things that made us
cry, laugh, question our existence?! 

hurrying amidst a sunrise
Edinburgh

so beautiful, but so lonely
Howth, Ireland

May sunshine in Virginian fields
madlee & isamee

"내가 명동은 좀 잘 알지 훗"
Seoul, Korea

reunion: family & country & feeling

미녀들의 수다, 3 generations in one picture
there are few things more beautiful than the wrinkled skin of my grandma.
Haenam, Korea

you are one of the best people I know.
frolicking in Busan, Korea

 

my "what is friendship?" friend
Myeongdong, our favorite touristy place in Seoul

reunion, our style. there was laundry and tooth-brushing.
Seoul, Korea

this will seem random but it is not: I need a husband who is good at not missing buses, trains, planes.
Korea

"Thank you." 

home sweet van
Charlottesville

Home is where the Binky is.
Charlottesville, US

mommy and me
Carter's mountain, Charlottesville!

diversity fdf
So thankful for yawl.
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." -Proverbs 27:17 

ganstagrass!
The Jefferson, Charlottesville

bathed in fall sunshine
Carter's Mountain again

farmers' market Saturday

an unlikely trio
which is probably the best kind of trio.
At the Colonnade Club, UVA

it was a chaotically spectacular kind of night
when we felt like high schooler astrologists

Thanksgiving for Lobster.
I mean lobster for thanksgiving.
I mean,, what?

our room was the object of everyone's secret envy on that night at Clemons 3rd floor
exam season in style, so fourth year

her resolutions were on a hotel note pad and mine on an irregular-size yellow paper, but our goals incorporated numbers and things, and that's all that really mattered.

chin chin!