KAORI'S SPOON

One summer night back in the Philippines in 2008, I spent a 13 hour experience on a psychedelic substance. That night, I told my spiritual soul sister that my soul was transcended to earth from the moon. Tonight, I remembered that very feeling; a strong flashback came to me of the moment I oddly felt so certain that I was from the moon (as bizarre as that sounds). I have to admit, it’s almost soothing when I feel the old chemicals bring me flashbacks of a previous trip, while I am completely sober.
Like everyday, I took my awkward bus ride home this afternoon. For no particular reason, buses make me behave like I am about to get murdered. Riding buses made me realize I can be quite a claustrophobic and an obsessive compulsive person. I sit weird and look weird and get really uncomfortable. Getting off buses is always a relief, I tend to hop off like a bunny unintentionally – my friends point it out to me. Despite all this, the walk home from the bus stop is really great. Even though I live in the downtown area, I get to pass by a landscape of a less busy atmosphere, with beautiful vintage, architectural buildings. The Dearborn station, the Franklin building.. Polk street is always so calming with delicate energy. After walking through Polk street, I turn left to a blank landscape, where buildings are still under first stages of construction. I first then walk by an empty parking lot, where I pass by another landscape which this time, is completely different and feel like I am far away from the city. It is an empty field, and the river a few blocks behind my building. There is always an astonishing view of the sky with an amazing sunset and fading clouds. I’ve started noticing the patterns and shapes of clouds from this walk everyday. Night time gives this area a whole new look – like a futuristic city with silent cars and lightly lit Polk street. The moon shines straight towards our block, and so it is always lit with low brightness. This walk is always a pleasing way to ending the day. It makes me look forward to my hot shower and my relaxation on the balcony.
Today’s beautiful walk back to my house, was somewhat extraordinary. It was as though I was experiencing an ‘introduction’ to that familiar erie yet refreshing energy of the full moon appearance later tonight. I noticed a lot of peculiar things that I never really paid attention to, until today. Everything felt magnified into my eyes.
I walk this walk everyday and yet I never noticed the Chicago Community Bank post on Polk street, which spins and lights up exactly at 5 o’clock. It stands on a really intricately designed post; only nerds like me probably even notice and care for it. As I waited for traffic light, a jogger stopped by me to wait as he continued to jog at the same spot. He wore masking tape all over his tshirt like the CTA Train securities. The masking tape shaped in yellow squares with neon orange borders around it on his chest and back. I don’t know how he managed this too but he wore hippie glasses with the tiniest rims I have ever seen. Not only that, this was clearly the strangest jogger I’ve ever seen – a hippie security guarded jogger who was probably about in his 50s. He turned to look at me and said hello. I smiled back but I was unreasonably being snobby and didn’t bother to greet back with a slight voice? I don’t know, I react slow sometimes and I was too busy observing him. Then I saw this lady with a red cloak like Harry Potter’s walking her dog which looked just like a guinea pig. And she was so frustrated that her dog didn’t want to go Potty and that drove her crazy. She started yelling “Poop or potty or whatever you want, just hurry your little butt!!!! Come on, potty!” I wonder how long she’s been walking her dog at that same spot she was making circles in, pushing her dog around to go potty. Poor little pig dog thing.. Then a car screeched, almost hitting a kid from the high school that’s a few blocks away from Polk, while he was jogging around the street. He not only screamed like a girl, but he was wearing a sweater that said VHORF which also read WHORE from afar, where I was observing him from. Meeting and observing all these strange people in one day in such a great landscape, called for a long Spoon post and a friendly talk with the universe. I turned left to the empty landscape by to the parking lot, and saw two birds that looked like lovers chasing after each other and it was really so cute. If only I could have the guts to tell the secret of my life my retarded feelings, I could be flying around in this beautiful landscape just like those birds! My eyes followed the birds around the sky and soon I found the moon right above my head as if to say, “Peek a boo!” It was, as I expected, a clean full moon. I stopped walking for a good 5 minutes and stared at the moon. I become such aa weirdo when I get into my own little world like this. An old Chinese lady tapped my shoulder and asked if I were okay. I turned to say Hi but snapped my neck weird. The lady heard the crack, and giggled. I got a little creeped out, or I probably creeped her out more, so I speedwalked home to write this up.

Everywhere.
At school, in the Philippines where I grew up most of my life, in Japan where I’m originally from, among my friends, among my family, I have never felt completely settled and home in my life. The scariest thing is I feel this most when I am around my parents and relatives. But I think I’m alright with that (kind of), because my parents feel foreign to each other, and to me; we seem even.
We are a family who are all extremely different in their own ways – only God knows how this happened. Two, who can’t seem to move away from their own culture that they grew up in and adapt to the new, even though they were more than willing to leave their country; and a little one that has basically no original culture but a culture that’s been picked up from various places without a label. People who were raised in one location most of their lives, don’t seem to understand how important culture actually is to them. I am desperate for a culture, and being able to call myself a nationality and feel adjusted to it? I feel like an ocean. Not even Pacific, Atlantic, Antartica; not even a lake. I feel like a floating ocean, like a puddle on no land. It’s a strange feeling, but it’s been growing more and more recently.
I remember being little, picturing myself in a family where I felt most comfortable even when my friends weren’t around. But I also remember being little and feeling uncomfortable playing around in the field and having fun when my parents were around. I remember being little, not knowing why I hated being home so much and missing people who weren’t relatively close to me. I also remember my parents telling me no one else will own me aside from them, because that is illegal. But I’ve always searched for a home everywhere we went.
And now that I’ve made my own decision to move across the world away from my parents, I finally feel at home and I’m finally feeling my own identity with comfort. I’ve been accepting a lot of things about my family, and learning to love them. It’s ironic that love can be so strong over time, growing in disguise. This is the first time I’ll ever state that the philosophy of Knowing is Knowing Less failed to explain my situation. But being able to finally love and accept my family, doesn’t exactly feel at home either, like everyone else seems to feel. I’m still searching for a definition for home. It’s difficult, and abstract to me. Is this weird?
The most uncomfortable place for me to be, in the whole wide world is around my relatives. This is such a complicated emotion that I haven’t been able to figure out. Being around them is only a reminder to me, that I really don’t belong. It’s just blood that obligates us to get together and act family-like. It’s only because we’ve all grown together that seem to make us care for each other. Family is such a strange concept to me. Because I don’t communicate with them, they still treat me and know me as the 5 year old I used to be. My family knows me least, out of everyone that I know in this world and this is true. They may know how I grew up, my childhood experiences, but they do not know what kind of person exactly they have raised. I have been making an effort lately however, on communicating with my parents. But this didn’t really help for me to understand what a family really is all about. It only made me realize how different my father, my mother and I are individually. It only got me to feel better on being by myself away from them. But I do cherish them for what we’ve gone through together as a ‘family’. I don’t even know where to begin. Even just among the Three of us, we’ve had so much revolutions in the house. Although we, three are so different and intolerable in too many ways, I’ve finally learned accept them the way there are by simply perceiving them as people. My mom is like so, while my dad is the contrary, and there is me – this is how life goes. There is no connection whatsoever I feel from them or for them. This is the strangest question, but the biggest question in my life. What is a Family? I know that if a father, (especially my father) reads this, he will lecture me and show me a whole document on how much of an expensive daughter I am. But really, I am more than aware of that. I’ve been lectured this over and over, getting longer each year, since I was born. I understand the financial support. What is a family?…