it's been awhile. life just sort of sucks you into these miniature vortices of mundanity and each day melts into the next, and it seems like you blink and a year has gone by.

bar results come out tomorrow. i can't believe it's been a year since i found out i passed. this time last year, i was just a wreck. not as bad as the few weeks before the test, but a wreck nonetheless. this time last year i was doing temp work as a receptionist at a law firm. a client came in one day and said to me "oh you're new here aren't you? they should keep you here. you're pretty."

so much has happened in a year's time. i've not traveled as much as before, but i've learned a lot about strategy, and how to deal with adults like i'm one of them. it is strange working with people twice my age. my bosses are really cool, but some opposing counsel look at me like i'm a kid. and to them, i am.

i am seriously thinking about starting a wedding photography business on the weekends.

Vietnam Summer Pix

The List, updated

Places I’ve been in the past six years, in no particular order (times in parenthesis if visited more than once):

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Nha Trang
Guatemala City
Antigua, Guatemala (3)
Amatitlan
Santa Cruz la Laguna, Lago Atitlan
Panajachel, Lago Atitlan
San Pedro La Laguna, Lago Atitlan
Jocotenango
San Jose, Costa Rica
Alajuela
Tortuguero
La Fortuna (Volcan Arenal)
Bocas Del Toro
Tikal
San Salvador
Granada, Nicaragua
Paris (3)
Lyon
Marseilles
Iles du Frioul
Cassis
Barcelona (2)
Mallorca
Cinque Terre (2)
Amsterdam (4)
Lisse
Siena
Prague (2)
Vienna (2)
Rome (2)
Venice (2)
Florence
Shanghai
Guangzhou
Hangzhou
Suzhou
Shenzen
Taipei
Kaoshuing
Hong Kong (3)
Macau
Lantau
Cheung Chau
Bangkok
Phuket (2)
Phi Phi (2)
Ko Chang
Siem Reap (Angkor Wat)
Oahu
Puerto Nuevo (10+)
New York City

Guatemala again...again!

Alright. I just can't help myself. It's an addiction.

When I see a $50 each way flight to Guatemala I just CANNOT stop myself from taking it. So on labor day weekend, I'm headed to yet another Guatemalan excursion.

This time I am trying my hand at tour-guiding and leading a group of 9 other people. It's a bigger group than I've ever traveled with, but I think it will be fun, especially since it's only for 3 nights.

More pictures, of course to come.

But first... VIETNAM! I leave in exactly 10 days.

Guatemala May 2007 pix

guatemala, here i come again!

Two weeks ago Spirit Air had a sale. LAX <--> Guatemala City, nonstop, $88 each way.
If you've been reading me long enough, you know how fast I was all over that.

I'm leaving, with my love, four friends and my cousin, to spend one night on the shores of magical Lake Atitlan, a quick jaunt up a volcano, and two nights in the old colonial town of Antigua, nestled between three volcanoes. We'll be staying here and here.

I can't wait!

Stop. Listen.

In this astonishing article, the Washington Post wages the experiment: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

What happens when you take one of the world's most acclaimed classical musicians, playing a $3 million Stradivarius, and have him play at a subway station during rush hour? How much money do you think he'd make? How many people would stop to listen?

Read the article and watch the video clips.

Consider: how often do you, in your rush to fulfill the banal, repetitive obligations that take up your days....how often do you stop and listen, observe, watch? How much of our lives do we simply let slip by unnoticed?

The Promotion

I was a dog in my former life, a very good dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being.

I liked being a dog. I worked for a poor farmer guarding and herding his sheep.
Wolves and coyotes tried to get past me almost every night, and not once did I lose a sheep. The farmer rewarded me with good food, food from his table. He may have been poor, but he ate well. And his children played with me, when they weren’t in school or working in the field. I had all the love any dog could hope for. When I got old, they got a new dog, and I trained him in the tricks of the trade.

He quickly learned, and the farmer brought me into the house to live with them. I brought the farmer his slippers in the morning, as he was getting old, too. I was dying slowly, a little bit at a time. The farmer knew this and would bring the new dog in to visit me from time to time. The new dog would entertain me with his flips and flops and nuzzles. And then one morning I just didn’t get up. They gave me a fine burial down by the stream under a shade tree. That was the end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so I sit by the window and cry. I live in a high-rise that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises. At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak to anyone all day. This is my reward for being a good dog. The human wolves don’t even see me.

They fear me not.

~James Tate

new year

it's strange, this feeling of starting something entirely new--again. usually when i pick up and move somewhere, it's to someplace very far away from home, in another country, across the globe--but i know exactly when i'll be coming back. now, i'm up north of L.A. at a new job and in a new house and sometimes i feel like i'm living someone else's life.

it's also so weird having an answer to the question: so, what do you do? what kind of career are you in? i'd always been working towards something before...but suddenly, i find that i have arrived. it's jarring, and not a little surreal. a beginner again.