KAORI'S SPOON

I just got home an hour ago and updated my School Portfolio so please go and take a look during your free time! SAIC.edu/~kikeda I worked on a new painting tonight in the studio at the 162 State Dorms. I am so excited for it to get done, and it is turning out a lot better than I’d expected. I just don’t like the scale of it, but then again, I never like the scale of any of my paintings. This is a portrait of one of my best friends, Shardi from High school. The sad thing about graduating from an international high school is, we really will never know when we’ll ever get to see our friends again.. Hmm. She returned to Australia after graduation and I don’t know when/how I will ever be able to visit that country down under I feel so far away. And I doubt she’d be able to come out all the way to Japan or plan on going back to the Philippines anytime soon, definitely not all the way here to Chicago! But memories will never change anything despite the distance.

My spiritual activities comes back and forth, and lately I’ve been the most un-spiritual. I try to think about it and love life the way I always do whenever I am able to dream. But I just can’t, then I realized maybe this is what my life would be like if I were never aware of the existence of life beyond time. My physical bores me so much. Lately, all my dreams have been lucid, where I would beg the characters to bring me back in because I am so bored of my waking life, and I still care about the events in my dream. So I’d sleep for over 12 hrs, simply living and breathing in my dream. (But really, on my bed.) But I allowed my dreams to be forgotten when I woke up from these lucid dreams, because I would reminisce about them as if they were really a part of my physical life. This gets even more depressing.
However, I really do have so much in my physical life to keep me content without dreaming. I notice that whenever I am spiritually active, I am overwhelmingly content about my physical life. While when I hit the unspiritual phase, I am unmotivated to do anything, I am forcing myself to do work/chores, I am a boring person craving for dreams. So then I find myself lost. Am I truly myself or am I just too much of a dreamer that I’ve lost myself? Many a times I would receive sudden flashbacks which I cannot recognize whether they were dreams or reality. This gets worse when those flashbacks involve small conversations and close friends. Some of these dreams even involve people who I don’t know but are friends of friends. Then soon, those friends of friends and I would actually meet and get to know each other, and the stories they tell me, I’d already have an idea or feel a certain familiarity towards the stories.
When I get into my un-spiritual phase, my spiritual sensitivity becomes so vague that I begin to question too much of the spiritual ability. Am I really feeling what I think I am feeling? This doubt got even stronger over the week when I found out that a friend, (actually, a pretty good friend who is almost like a brother to me) talked behind my back and ridiculed me for having these crazy beliefs to some of my friends. I should know I don’t need to stoop myself down to this physical level of arguments and offensiveness. What a waste of time, or waste of energy – but I guess I can’t help the fact that I am deeply affected. He is a good friend of mine after all. I don’t mind being made fun of for being a spiritual gypsy, I get that all the time. But I never thought he’d be the one to call me crazy.
Sometimes I also wonder why I have to be so overly sensitive. I wish I could just fully live my own life without thinking about what others would perceive of me. What he did to me made me realize just how shattering it is to be ridiculed for what one truly believes in and lives by. This is not my religion but it is what I do and experience.

Happy 20th Birthday, Cecca!!!!!! This weekend was so much fun. It was Cecca’s birthday on the 2nd of October. The night of her birthday, she came over to my house and we toasted with champagne and Mrs. Fields’ birthday cookie cake! Oh it was so delicious especially after putting it in the microwave for a few seconds enough to get the chocolates and icing to start sizzling.. mmmm We probably gained about 3 lb the next morning but that doesn’t matter! Here are some photos – good, good times!
Then over the weekend, our friend Tiffany organized a nice surprise dinner for Cecca at The Melting Pot. This restaurant is now my one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago. It serves several kinds of fondue courses for four members. Since there were quite many of us in the table, we were able to split into three or four groups of three to four people. We all decided to order different courses so that we can share across the table and try out different kinds. We were all passing around our long forks and poking around into different pots – such a messy table but it was well worth it; it was so delicious and so much watching and heating up the fondue! My group ordered the cheddar cheese Fondue to dip our bread in for appetizer, followed with an entree of Feast Fondue which had all the meat and seafood to dip into a soup of red wine and chicken broth. The meal was concluded with the most extravagant dessert – probably the best dessert I’ve had in a very long time and to my surprise, I think it beat my favorite, Max Brenner desserts! Really – amazing dinner, great energy from everyone that was able to make it to the party! I had such a good time!



(Melting Pot – 609 N Dearborn St., Chicago)