It’s been almost a week since I dyed my hair, and almost six months since my grandma passed away. Beyond the word "dying," maybe the connection doesn’t make sense, but neither does the cloud of energy that’s been surrounding me the last few days– blame it on a Leo fighting for her life against Pisces season, which in its own right has me thinking about psychics, spirits, and death (dramatic, I know– but what did I say? I’m a Leo!)
I dyed my hair on 2/22, a big “manifesting” day. This was done after a first tarot reading told me to adopt an “edgier” look, and a second tarot reading told me my soulmate is a man with strong water and fire placements, a man who one day will be as willing to pick up his life and move it across the country and an ocean as I will be, back to my home, my family, and my first and maybe truest self. After leaving the salon with a fresh, flirty shock of pink in my hair, I felt an extra skip in my step, a boost in my confidence and a feeling like anything (yes, including pulling my dream man,) was possible. But today, on 2/28, things are a little different. A few days have passed, and the sparkle of repeating numbers and affirmative manifestations have faded. My roots are as greasy as a kid’s fingers after eating a Costco pizza, now that I’ve been advised not to wash my oily Japanese scalp daily if I want to keep my new pink as popping as possible. I worked from home in my sweats, shoulders wound up to my ears, then furiously paced up and down the length of the East River before retiring to my apartment to cook a half-assed meal of shoyu, tofu, green beans and rice. While I was scrolling through my own Instagram stories (we’ve already established I’m a Leo, this should be unsurprising,) I looked at my hair again. It took me 24 years to give this new aesthetic change a shot, and, even at my big age, I got a temperature check from my mom and dad before going through with it. I remember the other time I added a little edge to my look. It was my first (and as of now, only,) cartilage piercing, something I had been thinking about for a while, just to myself. I got it done on a whim with my friend at the mall (at Icing, which is apparently the adult Claire’s). I of course texted my mom before walking into the store, and came home with my right ear throbbing scarlet and radiating an excessive amount of heat, with a proud steel ball punched through its curve. While I made sure to get my mom’s approval, I completely forgot about my grandma, who at the time was 90 years old, and, when I was in high school, reminded me pretty much every day I stepped into the passenger seat of her car that my nails were “ugly” when they were not bare. “I prefer a light pink, or even a clear polish,” she would tell my tangerine thumbs, purple pinkies and metallic middle fingers. I took a deep breath, swung open her screen door, and showed her my new hardware. “What you think, Grams?” “Show me the other side.” “What you mean, other side? I only got one done!” “When you get your ears pierced, don’t you get two?” “Yeah–” “So why get one when you paid for two?” The thought had never crossed my mind. Remembering it now, I don’t think they would have charged me for two cartilage piercings anyway, but my grandma only knew earrings in pairs, and the fact that she did not care about the placement of the piercing, but rather the price, had me shocked. Maybe old age had softened her mind not to register the “boldness” of my choice, or maybe she never really cared anyway. She always had a rebellious streak– I liked to joke that she woke up every day and chose chaos, even before, but especially after a long life lived relegated her to her green La-Z Boy next to the front door. Which brings me back to the here and now. I wonder what she’d think of this new me. Although she passed in September, she had kind of already been gone for a while, pieces of her sticking around in those last six months just to make sure things were in order before she left us earthside. She had a stubborn streak, and that resolve translated into a patience specially reserved for her grandchildren. As me and my brothers scrambled to make flights across the country after the news of her placement in hospice, she waited, and waited, and waited, even though I can only imagine how hard it must have been, until each of us could say goodbye and tell her we’d be okay. I wonder who she remembered me as, since I had stopped living at home a year prior, and we went from holding hands and singing Japanese children's songs before making yet another shave ice run (her order was plain strawberry, mine strawberry and condensed milk,) to barely three minutes on the phone every couple months or so (she couldn’t take a call without help.) I’ve changed a lot since she started to go, and changed even more since she left. I just happened to think about it today because my hair is the first visible, external difference that made me think about the fact that things have changed in the first place. If she's out there, I hope she’s proud of me. I hope she sees me living my life, chasing a New York job (and paycheck) while cherishing and taking pride in the pieces of Hawaii and me that she played such an instrumental role in raising. I hope she sees me trying my best to share the pieces of her I loved most with the world, since she can no longer do it herself. At the same time, it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t have much of a reaction at all. She wasn’t the most sentimental anyway– a survivalist whose actions always spoke louder than her words, which were always blunt and to the point. If anything, I’d pour my heart out, and she’d hand me a tissue, shrug her shoulders and ask if next time I’d try to paint my whole head purple, or take a stab at a perm. And I’d love her for it.
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It's been a minute since my last post, but a lot has been going on. Given the “unprecedented times” we’ve been living in with the COVID-19 pandemic (we hear that a lot, don’t we?), I thought early on that I could be drafting weekly blog posts of all the ways I’ve spent my time during our stay-at-home orders. If all I’m doing is staying at home, of course I’ll have the time to bake a bread and start a hobby! One day it’ll be valuable to know the day-to-day ways we spent this once-in-a-lifetime global crisis, and it deserves to be documented!
I kept up with it for the first four weeks and posted them. My first month here was full of trying to create what life was “supposed” to look like, filled with whipped dalgona coffee and a new exercise regime (what was I thinking?!), but as this second month has come around, I have simply run out of steam (sorry to those posts, which now live in word document drafts and off this website.) Life was repetitive, and my school and work commitments stayed the same. While I got angry at people behind a screen going to the beach illegally, I was still pulling weird hours and trying to turn in my work on time, holed up at home. Some of my professors were not as flexible to the six-hour time difference as I wished they were, and my schedule consisted of taking long naps through actual, normal, usable daylight hours when I had classes at three in the morning. What started as a spring break trip home turned into staying here for what has now been just a day over two months (I came in on March 15, ready to maximize my final break of undergrad, holding onto a fleeting week of peace and family time. What a thought that was.) It has been full of its ups and downs, but there is a lot to be thankful for, and I’ve been trying to focus on that with this second month of my quarantine. My dog is an old man and I am grateful to spend this time with him. My family argues of course, but I am very lucky to spend time with the people I love for an extended time before my graduation (and what may be my final flight out of the nest.) My grandma gets to see me graduate while I’m in the room, since she does not travel anymore! Although the job market isn’t too promising, I stayed the full length of my internship, a rarity for many companies during this pandemic. They were even flexible to my time difference (Thank you, Universal Kids!) Although I am not in New York anymore, I have wonderful friends who helped me pack up when it wasn’t safe or right for me to hop on a plane and pack up myself (shout out to Juliana, Bee and Sofia!) While I hope to return to New York soon, there is no place like home. I can sit in our yard and soak up some sun, and I can take destination-less walks around my neighborhood to just enjoy the fresh air. Although the times are certainly “unprecedented,” I just need to breathe and trust that everything will be okay. * Sending big love to the people working on the front lines to combat the pandemic. I know I’m “doing my part” by staying home, but during this I also tried to give a little to local causes and groups that have been affected by this crisis. Please help in the ways you can! On Monday, November 25, 2019, I had a spiritual experience. It’s been two days since I saw Hozier perform during his residency at the Hammerstein Ballroom and I haven’t been the same (and to address the elephant in the room, yes, you could say he “took me to church.” I’ll roll my eyes too.) I first started listening to him in high school, 2014, and I was but a baby (but my taste was there!) Honestly, I wasn’t really listening to Wasteland, Baby! when Bee and I bought the tickets. I enjoyed the singles and the EP, but it was during an intense study session earlier this fall where I listened the album and had something shift. The concert was incredible– as only my second concert (and my first without seats!) I was nervous to be in the General Admissions section. Clocking in at only five feet tall, I feared being squashed. Bee was very kind and had us stay near the back, which worked to my advantage because I could see everything better from farther away. And yes, of course the second I went to the restroom I heard him get on stage (it couldn’t be any other way.) He acknowledged each section in the audience, the gods (in the nosebleeds,) demigods (in the mezzanines,) and us, the mortals on the floor. It felt like a compliment to be a mortal– I think if he were in the crowd, he’d want to be a mortal, too. One of my favorite moments was when he played Wasteland, Baby! which is my favorite from the album. He explained that when the song was written in 2016, the Doomsday Clock was set so humanity was two minutes from destroying itself. How would we spend those two minutes? Hopefully doing acts of kindness and expressing our feelings to those we love. Writing it now these are things that have been often said to me before, but when those words came out of his mouth in that poetic way, I felt like the most meaningful thing ever. I didn’t think that song would make the set list since it wasn’t played when my friend had seen him in a couple days before, so it felt like a special present just for me. And then came From Eden. I always liked the song, but it was after I found out Bee liked Hozier too and mentioned that song when I really took the time to appreciate it (I’m guilty of saying I love something and retroactively going back to learn about it so I look cool.) The arrangement played at the concert was slower, and it is now my favorite by miles (here's a version from another concert.) I swayed, sang along, and before I knew it, tears were spilling out of my eyes. When Hozier the album came out I had never been to a concert. I remember thinking I would save my first concert to someone who was truly worth it, and he was it. And at the start of this year, when Bee and I booked those tickets, I had a full-circle moment; he was going to be my first concert (Kacey Musgraves ended up being my first concert in October, but those tickets were bought later.) I felt I had waited an eternity for it. After the release of Hozier, I remember reading an interview where it was mentioned that it takes Hozier a long time to write songs, and that it would take maybe five years for the next album to come out, a far cry from the standard two or three years that listeners are used to. I was crushed then, but did the math and figured I would be in college on the Mainland, so wherever I was, I’d find him there. It’s jarring to think about how much life has changed. Where I am now is where me then dreamed of being, from school to city of residence to career experience. I know the last couple posts have been fraught with homesickness and uncertainty about being in New York, but it is moments like these where I realize how lucky I am and how amazing my life has been to this point. It’s wild how those thoughts then manifested themselves into where I am now– I was scared to express my dreams to anyone because I thought they wouldn’t come true. Some things change so much, but some things stay exactly the same. Today my friend Cera told me to watch a surf documentary called Momentum Generation. The doc highlights a group of surfers who became friends as kids and turned into some of the most famous names in the sport. Cera said seeing Pipeline and home on film made her happy, so although I have no personal investment in surfing, I turned it on. It’s not that I ever hated the sport, but I fall out of the “Hawaii girl” stereotype – I don’t surf, and never learned. I am not a woman of the water. I admire the ocean from afar, and fear her (out of respect!) When I’m home, you can find me at the beach lounging on the sand, only putting myself in the water if there are absolutely no waves. Even though I was not the movie’s target audience, I’m a sucker for a good documentary, and really enjoyed it. You don’t need to be a surfing buff to follow along, and I loved the movie's take on male friendship and masculinity; despite their pasts, the group are now an example of men who can support and feel supported by one another. Despite the pressure the group were under the men had this calm energy about them. They take it slow and go with the flow. Perhaps that’s something that has to come naturally to someone whose profession is moving with the rhythm of the ocean, finding balance in chaos. New York is a fast-paced place to live and simply existing in it can be stressful sometimes. When I’m home I can look around, take a deep breath and just be happy I’m there. Maybe that comes with being near nature, among life bursting with vibrant greens, yellows, reds and every shade of blue. I miss seeing colors like that. New York hums with bright lights, but everything seems to settle in shades of brown and grey. I can find a rainbow every other day in Hawaii, here I don't think I've seen one once. Momentum Generation was a much needed breath of fresh air. I am definitely watching surf competitions live online now, no matter where I am on Earth. I hope I make it to the Eddie when I’m home for Christmas. I’ve never been before, but while an hour drive to the North Shore seemed like an eternity in my first eighteen years of life, I now have a greater understanding of what “far” really is. I don’t know where I’ll be after college graduation, but I do know seeing that event in person won’t be nearly as easy once breaks aren't something dictated by a school schedule. One thing I started doing after I went to college was sitting at Diamond Head Lookout with my friends. We place ourselves in a row on a rock wall, our slippers dangling over the edge of the lookout's steep decline, and watch the people surf below. The waves on the South Shore aren’t the beasts of the North Shore, and from so far up above, you just see tiny people on tiny waves, little specks on an eternal ocean. Jack Johnson was also woven into this story too, because he was a surfer and friend of the group in this documentary. The film closed with his song “Better Together,” and I found myself singing along in the wee hours of the morning. I’ve been listening to a lot of music from home recently, and I think it’s because the temperatures are dropping. Usually the sadder stuff makes me cry, but recently it hasn’t. I think that’s a good thing. Those songs don’t bring up specific memories, just imagery and feelings of home. Ginger plants in my front yard, fluttering in the breeze. The garlic shrimp on the North Shore, where my dad took my brother and I to eat this past summer when we were feeling blue. The steep hill on Kilauea Ave. If it is a clear day, you can see the neighbor islands peeping out on the horizon. I jotted down a short list of songs from home that are making me happy right now. Here they are, in no particular order (just kidding, Jack Johnson is at the top because he's on my brain.)
This week I finally finished watching the second season of HBO’s Big Little Lies. Thank you, NYU’s student housing, for having HBO Go (so everyone in my family can enjoy it.) But I’m not here to talk about how fabulously grating Meryl Streep was as Mary Louise Wright or how flawless Zoë Kravitz’s skin is. Big Little Lies is an emotional drama, but it wasn’t the plot, nor the predictable conclusion to the series that brought on the prickly heat of tears as I took in the finale’s last minutes. Willie Nelson and his daughter Paula cover Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” as each character faces their individual futures, and that was what got my tear ducts going. The melody brings back a specific snapshot from deep within the recesses of my memory. It’s a Sunday afternoon. My dad is behind the wheel, humming along to that same song, this time covered by Hawaiian music artist Amy Hanaiali’i. This is standard practice. Every Sunday afternoon we visit my grandma and grandpa, who were living in the same house my dad grew up in at the time. As we coast the roads of Mānoa Valley, Dad plays Kanikapila Sunday, the Hawaiian music program on our local NPR station, or a Hawaiian album of his choice. We are coming home our trip to Papa’s, and because life is a movie, the clouds from the valley are caressing the mountains, a light blanket of mist settling on the trees lining the street. The sun shines through the clouds, breaking cracks of light over the neighborhood. My child brain wondered why someone bothered to make a song like this. Doesn’t the sun usually shine when it drizzles? Oh, now naïve I was! Cut to this Wednesday, where in New York it rained non-stop all day, and there was no break for the sunlight to shatter the clouds and shine through. I walked 20 minutes and had my jeans plastered to my legs, and spent the next four hours with classroom air conditioner numbing my shivering knees. No wonder Papa wasn’t a fan of New York (although to be fair, he was a Hawaii boy studying at Columbia in the 1950s, and couldn’t afford proper heating or a meal that wasn’t eggs and rice.) My dad gained an appreciation for Hawaiian music during his years spent in school on the East Coast; now, in a similar position, I have also gained that same appreciation for the soundtrack of my childhood. I’m lucky though; where my dad couldn’t enjoy the soothing sounds of the Hawaiian language, I have a Spotify playlist I can press play on when I need a reminder of home. How lucky I am to grow up where I did. I am close to both sets of grandparents, a very important part of my upbringing. I was raised on the same plot of land my mother grew up on, the same land her mother grew up on, under the shadow of Diamond Head. Fifteen minutes away, Papa pulled my brothers and I around the cul-de-sac in a red Radio Flyer wagon, the same cul-de-sac where he rode on bikes with his kids decades earlier. Where rain comes down on a sunny day, and there’s always a rainbow waiting on the other side.
The year of yes is still on, a month in. I have so many thoughts I want to put to paper (does that phrase apply in this digital format?) In a "let's go for it" moment, I decided to enroll in an exercise class. This cardio kickboxing (!!) class takes place at our school’s gym, and while I didn't know what to expect, there’s definitely some kicking going on for sure... some kicking of my you-know-what! Thank goodness for my friend Bee, who is taking the class with me. She is strong, fit and I am so glad she is with me every Thursday in that God-forsaken fitness studio. I’ve never been super into exercise– I was hoping that me walk-running for 25 minutes three days a week to class was enough, but given my occasional windedness climbing the subway station stairs I can say with certainty that it’s not. Bee and I took a Pilates class last year, but it wasn’t nearly as “intense” as this one. But… year of yes. Why not try something new? The instructor scares the crap out of me; he’s the kind of guy that is rock solid, a wall of a man. I’m 2/2 on getting called out for not squatting low enough during this one exercise, although I’m not sure if it is physically possible for me to get that low and not fall on my behind just yet. I know these things come with practice, and I know I’m just a sensitive girl, but I’m trying my best and pushing myself out of my comfort zone and feeling like a bit of a flop. Exercise in general is not in my wheelhouse; I made sure to take every possible yoga class to pass my PE requirement to avoid the mile run in high school (although for what it’s worth, yoga is difficult, too!) I was on the track team in middle school and for one precious year of high school, and always came in last place. My ego is such that I figured that stuff just wasn’t for me, though I did get my mile time to a trim seven minutes and those years forever changed the shape of my body. Wow, even writing that makes me want to get fit, but the WORK that goes into it makes me think otherwise. I’m a lazy lump! I am trying my best though, and am putting this here to say that I’m proud of myself, even though I am drenched in sweat two seconds in and I’m out of breath the entire time. I cannot lie– it feels good when that Thursday class is over and I have my blood pumping (yes, I’ve been talking like it’s just the worst thing in the world but it’s only once a week.) I guess the doctors (and Bee) are right– those endorphins really do something. We’ll see how this goes. I’m no MMA fighter, but ready to get shredded (haha) and hope to know how to kick someone in the nuts if they deserve it. It is currently 1:53 am and for yet another year I am lying in my dorm room attempting to readjust my sleep schedule. The time difference from Honolulu to New York City is six hours, and with each trip back to school comes a time warp that is still difficult to overcome, only made worse by my inability to sleep on airplanes. My mom says that writing our thoughts down helps us find clarity, or at least helps alleviate the racing in our heads that prevent us from falling asleep. Right now, it is absolutely worth a shot.
I landed back in the city for my final year of undergrad at NYU three years to the day since I moved into my freshman dorm and started this crazy chapter of my life. I got a lot done at home this summer– I finally secured a driver’s license after years of being too scared to get behind the wheel, and had the amazing opportunity to intern with two awesome places that pushed me and taught me about different parts of my field of study. I’m excited to be on a roll in my life, and don’t want it to stop, which is why this fall will mark my year of yes. I’ve had so many great opportunities during my undergraduate run, but know that I tend to say “no” too quickly. I'm always too nervous, too cautious, too fearful. I am an introvert, albeit a deceptively talkative one, and often shy away from chances to meet new people and push my comfort zone. Friends from various parts of my life have encouraged me to be more open to opportunities, and at this transitional period in my life, it only seems right to go for it. This being my last year in college, it could be argued that this sudden spur of productivity could be attributed to an “Oh My God, I’m running out of time!” realization – and that is absolutely correct! That said, better late than never. I’m resolving to say more yes. Writing this piece here is one of my first steps. I’ve been meaning to write more about me and my life, again at the encouragement of my mom (we love a supportive parent!) She told me a friend at work thought that coming from where I do and moving to where I am makes for an interesting take on the world, and it should be published somewhere. She encouraged me to write a blog, and it’s only taken eight months to finally have the guts to make it happen. So hi. My name is Meghan, and I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. It wasn’t that great – loving family, kind community, perfect weather and delicious food… who would want that?! I was incredibly lucky to grow up where I did, and beyond its stellar reputation as a beautiful place, Hawaii’s location meant that I was raised around and with an appreciation for my home’s unique natural, social and cultural ecosystems. When college decision time rolled around and I turned 18, I took a leap of faith and went headfirst into an environment that could be described as the polar-opposite to the world I was raised in. I was headed to New York City, the Big Apple. Since moving for school, I have learned and grown so much as a person. With my parents on the other side of the country, I’ve become more independent (although I am still turning to them for assistance more than I should.) Being raised in an amazing community in the middle of the Pacific to taking a crash course on adulthood in a big bustling city, sometimes I need to take a step back and process how I got here in the first place. While of course it’s rather self-important to believe my perspective to be * entirely unique, * my life and the two places I call home do, as Hannah Montana would say, give me the best of both worlds. This is simply a place to cast my thoughts out into the vast void that is the Internet. For me, this is a documentation for me of how I’m navigating my life right now, somewhere to place thoughts that might’ve felt just interesting enough to pen outside of my journal. If you're still reading this right now, congratulations – I can't believe you made it this far! Thanks for reading, and welcome to me! |