Emantable

I was pulling into my garage right at 7pm and the SoCal Sunday Night program was starting on KUSC–the classical music station in Los Angeles that happens to also be run by my university. The started talking about a composer’s final symphony and building up the suspense, but I heard the just a handful of notes in the background and immediately knew they were talking about Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Had I not been at home, I would have been trapped in my car for over an hour. I rushed into my office and put it on KUSC. They continued talking and I could hear the audience chatter in the background. I quickly made some coffee and sat down just as the concert was about to begin.

I came very close to seeing a live performance of Mahler’s Ninth at Walt Disney Concert Hall a few weeks ago. Under any other circumstance I would have been there for sure, but my father had not yet been buried, and the last time I was at a performance of one of Mahler’s symphonies, I was with my dad. It’s already a symphony that deeply affects me emotionally, and I couldn’t bear to go. Even tonight, my heart ached while listening to the performance of Mahler on the radio. My mom and I were talking about how my dad’s the reason we both love classical music. We both used to say how boring KUSC was when I was very little. Fast forward to now, and both my mom and I have each been to over five hundred performances, and we’d tear up during the pandemic when there were no performances.

So thank you, dad, for leaving my mom and me this wonderful passion to remember you by for the rest of our lives until we meet again.

I was thinking about the Netflix series “The Good Place” earlier today and wondering if we in fact are stuck in The Bad Place. Exhibit 1: Love. We invariably classify it as one of the good emotions to feel, perhaps the supreme emotion among the good ones. Yet, this beautiful emotion is the one that causes the most harm. We’re all hurt at one point or another by someone we love, or we’re hurt by their loss. The clearest example for me at the moment is the loss of my father. The love I have for my father made his passing excruciatingly painful. How can something so beautiful cause so much pain? It’s as if you’re between a thick concrete wall and a giant pendulum. It’s weight swings away from you the more you love, but it will one day swing back toward you and you’ll be tied to that wall. The more you love the higher the pendulum will be pulled back and the harder it will crush you.

However, even after knowing how much it hurts, how much torture it is…I still choose love.

I want to read before going to bed and go to sleep a little earlier because I’m going to an LA Phil rehearsal in the morning. So I want to get a good night’s sleep. 🙂

I stepped outside a few moments ago to take out the trash and I was greeted by a cold silence pierced only by own footsteps. Not a naked branch stirred as if all—living and non-living— huddled inward to protect against the cold. I looked north in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the green comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), but I think it was too early and not likely to be visible from Los Angeles due to the light pollution. Perhaps I’ll try again 50,000 years from now. 50,000 years. It’s one of those random facts I loved to tell my dad about because he was nerdy about these things as well. I sighed and wondered where in all that eternity could he be. I dropped my gaze a little and saw the white mountain peaks eerily lit by the moonlight. Their majestic daytime beauty now looked ominous. Journeying up their slopes at this hour was sure to be treacherous. I felt forlorn looking at the moonlit mountains. I felt lonely and like I would never feel complete again. Like I could never be 100% happy ever again.

A friend and colleague of mine is leaving the construction program I work on and I’ve decided to pursue his soon-to-be former position. It has a much higher pay, more responsibilities, and more prestige than my current position. It is highly unlike me to be writing about this on here, but I’m long past the person who keeps his head down and doesn’t want to share his goals and dreams.

I love my job, and the worst thing that could happen is for me to remain in my current position. So I really have nothing to lose. So I stopped making my usually cost/benefit analysis and decided to just bite the bullet and send my company and email that this opportunity is coming up and that I’d like for them to propose me to the client for the new position.

So I’m going for it and I’m putting it out there.

One of the reasons winter is my favorite season is that the skies are always much more dramatic and beautiful. Today, for example, it was thrilling to be driving towards the mountains on my way home as seeing that peaks had been hidden by clouds. Even though it’s dangerous, I thought of how beautiful it would be to drive up into the mountains while it was snowing. It’s like another world up there. Centuries ago, there weren’t large populations on either side of these mountains, but I wonder myths might have arisen had there been a need to routinely cross over these mountains. What if there were a city-state on either side of these mountains and the passage between them were a sort of treacherous no-man’s-land. What type of sorcery could be protecting the secrets in these mountains? What monsters would be encountered on the journey through the mountains?

Well, I ended my daily streak yesterday. 😦 I’ve continued writing at a late hour and last night I fell asleep trying to type. I spend a lot of hours on the computer for work, so when it comes time to writing these I lie on my stomach and type away. I know it’s a terrible posture, but I’ve gotten used to it.

The main thing I was looking forward to writing about this weekend was Otomisan–the oldest Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles. We ended up not eating here because the wait was too long and we instead went to a Korean BBQ place in Little Tokyo a few miles away. Otomisan is a small restaurant in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights. It used to have a much higher Japanese population in the past, but the demographics have since changed, and now this is the only Japanese restaurant left in this neighborhood. Although, I think it may be the last remaining in this particular part of Boyle Heights. I find it hard to believe there are no other Japanese restaurants in the entire neighborhood.

While I’m on the topic of disbelief, I was surprised and skeptical that a restaurant from the 1950s could call itself the oldest Japanese restaurant in LA. After a few moments, I sadly realized that the timeline made sense given that Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps during World War II. So any Japanese restaurant that existed before the war would have been forced to close.

I look forward to making another attempt to visit this restaurant and learn more about its history and its food.

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There was more rain the following day, so it turned into a day where I watched more videos than I should have while staying cozy inside away from the cold. I did manage to finish three reports for the day ended, so my Sunday wasn’t completely wasted on entertainment.

I said yesterday, I would start writing about the day before so that I wouldn’t be writing late at night, but here I am again writing very late into the night. I’ve always loved the quiet and tranquility of nights, and old habits are hard to change. I mean to write a little bit about last week’s concert, and about a work event last night. So perhaps I’ll do a longer post this weekend since I’ll be a lot less busy.

Not much to report on today, other than I am very exhausted after a busy week. I didn’t have much time for myself, but I am making an effort to practice the piano more, and to also read more. I love books, and I’ve given up on reading only one book at a time. I’ve found that sometimes I get stuck reading through a book slowly when there are other books lined up that I finish much more quickly. Anyway, we’ll see.

I find it ironic, that last night I was writing about wanting to be in a cloister to find my peace, and today I was at a work event with hundreds of people and…I kinda enjoyed it.

I’ll post more about the event tomorrow. I going to start writing about the my day on the following day, because it’s been getting a little too tiring to be posting these late at night.

There is so much I want to do, but find myself pressed for time. I sometime feel like I would accomplish everything I wanted to if I occupied every single minute of my time towards something productive. Yet, I’m a daydreamer and love letting my time wander from time to time. My daydreaming sometimes gets in the way of work, but it’s also the source of my greatest ideas and sometimes clever solutions to problems. I procrastinate and sometimes easily distracted, but I’m also very good at what I do and people are pleased with my work.

This year, I need to really embark on a journey to eliminate as many unecessary distractions from my life and keep my eye on the prize. I sometimes crave the life of monks who cloister themselves away from the goings-on of the world and spend their days reading and meditating.

I’m reminded of the last local trip we took with my dad. We took the train to Mission San Juan Capistrano. We explored the grounds a litte, but eventually we settled on a bench looking out into the large courtyard. We all commented on how there was an unexplicable peace just sitting there in silent contemplation. Perhaps, to be more focused I need to counterintuitively take a step back and slow down.