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| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Friday Night Demons (Part II)
The Middle Half, or: Fu, Cha-Cha, M�ya, and Fu-ta Chicken Wings Fu�s place was, of course, tiny and immaculate. Cha-cha, an ancient lemony cat with big brown eyes, was warily curious of me and very nearly came out to greet me but then thought better of it. While Aisho changed his shirt in the bathroom, Fu showed me the table where he works, a tiny desk in his bedroom. He showed me the piece he�s working on. His art is much like Georgia O�Keeffe�s. He works with flowers that he�s sketched onto canvas and then began to add origami paper torn into tiny pieces and glued on. The work, like O�Keeffe�s flower paintings, are smaller than you might think for the impact that they have. They overflow the canvas, are worked with an eye toward form and color. Fu has the eye of an artist�which I knew both from having seen his work before and also from his judgment of my pieces and other work in the studio�as well as the habits (this is not exactly the right word, but it�s the one that comes most easily to mind) of an artist. By that, I mean that I noticed that the tools that he uses are not things that one might buy to create art, but are tools that are used for other things that he has noticed or found will work better for him. For example, he does things like use a big makeup brush instead of a paintbrush. (None of this is explaining very adequately what I mean to say, which is that I�ve noticed that Fu does what other artists do as they develop their work: They begin to put everything into it, the boundaries between how they live their everyday lives and what they create begin to blur so that things that would not normally be considered by non-artists to be a part of the creation of art are put to use in the creation of art. And that�s still an inadequate explanation, I�m afraid.) I asked Fu how long it had taken him to finish the quarter or so canvas that he had done and he told me that it took about a month, that the finished piece would take about six months. I was reminded, in the inherent meditative quality of the way in which his work must progress, of my own carved work. It�s not a process that one does quickly�and Fu is more like me than not in that he often moves and thinks very quickly�but he has to slow that quickness down to work, to create, and that�s a very important way to balance that quickness. (Again, this is an inadequate way to express what I came to understand.) Fu gave me a shirt, a blue shirt with a white and light brown design on it, in return for having given him a plaster copy of the cast I took of him. I was a bit surprised at this unexpected gift, but I thanked him (I�m sure inadequately), and folded the shirt and put it with my bag on the couch. Fu and I came out of the bedroom, and Fu went into the kitchen to retrieve the Fu-ta chicken wings. I looked at Fu�s business cards, which were in a holder on a set of glass shelves. I tried to memorize his last name, a long name that refused to stay in my memory despite my reading it again and again. The Aisho came out of the bathroom having changed into a sage green polo shirt, and showed me a lamp that I am not describing very well when I say that it had two cats in it. (Fu�s apartment is filled to the brim with animal decorations�cats mostly (my favorite being a huge maneki-neko on the sideboard in the tiny dining room), but a few dogs, a couple of geese in the bathroom.) Fu called Aisho into the kitchen, showed him the Fu-ta booty. The Aisho thought better of taking them and this led Fu to offer us ice cream. I came and stood in the doorway of the kitchen, said that I didn�t want any, but would have a bite of the Aisho�s if that was okay. �What?� Fu said. The Aisho said, �We�ll share.� Fu opened his freezer to take out the ice cream (Dreyer�s no sugar added chocolate ice cream), and I could see among the many things in the packed freezer, a frozen octopus tentacle. (I am often fascinated by the things in people�s refrigerators and freezers as I am by what goes into people�s shopping carts in the grocery store. I look at the things that people are buying to feed themselves and others and wonder how those things reflect the kinds of people they are, the kinds of lives they lead. And Fu�s chocolate ice cream and octopus tentacles made me wonder too.) Somehow Lance came up in the conversation and the Aisho said that I didn�t like Lance. �Why not?� Fu demanded. �I don�t know,� I said, not up to explaining that Lance�s personality was just ugh to me and that the stories of his wandering eye and womanizing had done nothing but increase my distaste for him. Also, he�s a terrible waiter, not just bad at his job, but one of those kinds of people who ignore you if they think you look like you�re not going to tip enough (something he actually did to a party of my friends that I brought in one night to the restaurant for a celebratory sushi dinner after they had helped me close the summer show and we were all still in our work clothes, looking hot and dusty--only to be waited on by Lance, who was an indifferent server at first, but who tacked on a gratuity that I was too tired to dispute and then disappeared on us, and that�s enough of a reason right there for me to dislike the guy.) Fu asked why I didn�t like Lance, but then answered his own question by saying, �Because she likes me!� I laughed. The Aisho and I were given beer and a bowl of ice cream with two spoons and then we sat on the floor at Fu�s table in the living room. I leaned against the couch and first folded my legs up, then stretched them out each in turn, but they were still killing me after about ten minutes. (Luckily, my right leg fell asleep soon after, so that only my left leg was killing me when I stood up forty minutes later.) I forget what we talked about (no, wait, I do remember that we talked about the shared tips in the restaurant). Fu took a call, chatted in Japanese to the party on the other end, hung up and told us that M�ya was coming over. M�ya is the woman I�ve referred to as The Dragon Lady in the diary because her demeanor in the restaurant (when she is working, being professional) is one of slightly prickly stand-offishness. However, she turns out to be quite likeable outside the restaurant. (And I deserve a kick for not remembering how this is like I always was when I was working in restaurants. There were two me's then: the working me that had to behave and act as though I cared even when I didn't and the outside-the-restaurant me who is, well, just me, the real-person me. And I was seeing the same thing--but not recognizing it--with M'ya.) M'ya came to the front door (which was open), saw me, and gave an almost surprised, �Oh!� and sat down. Aisho had returned to the bathroom and while Fu got up to get M�ya a beer, she and I were left alone at the table. She said, �Is this your first time?� (Meaning, I took it, my first time at Fu�s apartment.) I nodded, said, �Yes.� Fu and Aisho returned, and they talked about how busy the restaurant had been that night, how the sushi bar had been slammed all night, but that the dining room hadn�t been that busy. Fu and Aisho complained about the tip situation, talked about how tips are divided in other restaurants. I said that they were kind of lucky to get tips at all, as most other chefs got their salary only and no tips. But, I conceded, their situation was unique in that they also served customers, which chefs in non-Japanese restaurants don�t have to do. This talk led into talk about rude customers and they told the usual restaurant horror stories about people who do the most obnoxious things. (Making out and having sex in the tatami rooms, leaving underwear at the sushi bar, things like that.) I recognized a lot of the behavior from my own restaurant days, recognized a lot of the disdain that all restaurant personnel have for most customers. (Their talking about the couples having sex in the rooms made me recall one particularly gross couple from my restaurant days: an old man�probably in his late 70�s or early 80�s�and his very young (mid-20�s) female companion, who used to wear these tight stretchy mini-dresses with no underwear (and don�t ask how we all knew that) and do things like take off her shoes under the table and rub his crotch with her foot, or, sometimes worse, sit there and make eyes at the guy while she licked the straw in her drink suggestively. All this she did while the server was standing at the table. I can�t imagine what she did when we walked away.) This talk led M�ya to make a comment about how it was always American customers who acted this way, and, sadly, from my observations, I have to agree with her. (The Aisho asked later when we were playing pool, �What did you think of M�ya?� I said that I liked her. He told me that a lot of people didn�t. I asked why, and he explained that she was very outspoken. I laughed. Outspoken women are like treasure to me. I reminded him of her comments about Americans, and he said, �When she said that, I was, like, Oh, no.� I laughed again, saying, �But I agree with her. Americans are obnoxious. She forgot rude, lazy, fat and ugly though.�) It was interesting though, to have this conversation go on in a mixture of Japanese and English. All the restaurants I worked in held mostly Spanish and English speakers, and I grew up in a bilingual household and have worked in labs with people from all over the world, so I am used to hearing bilingual conversation. That�s not an uncomfortable thing for me as I�ve noticed it can be for people who are used to dealing with only English speakers and who assume that any non-English conversation going on around them must necessarily be about them�and that the speakers must, of course, be making fun of them. (And I always want to say to people who think this: either they are talking about something that has nothing to do with you, or they�re trying to find a way to communicate with you by first discussing it in their native language, or they are actually making fun of you�something that your native English speaker does, but will wait to do until you leave the room. So there.) Anyway, when Fu�s Japanese was very carefully and more formally spoken, I was able to understand about 30-40% of it if I concentrated very hard. (And when I lost track, it was only because I was trying to hold onto a word because it sounded familiar and I thought I could dredge its meaning up from the little Japanese I studied almost seventeen years ago.) When Fu spoke to M�ya, he spoke much more quickly and informally and I caught next to none of it. Another thing I noticed was how the Aisho communicated in a mixture of Japanese and English and how he instinctively modulated his level of both according to how he gauged the understanding of the people in the room. It�s a complicated thing to do (as well as to explain), but reminded me of the ways in which our thinking is shaped by the languages that we hear and speak growing up. (Spanish, for example, is very fast and people who speak Spanish before they learn English often speak English very, very quickly.) With the Aisho�s Japanese, I noticed that he�ll say something in English, then translate just enough of it into Japanese to keep everyone afloat without too often slowing or derailing the conversation. The other thing this reminded me of was how formal Japanese sentences are constructed and how that reflects this way of thinking that is often very unlike Western thought. That sounds all overly analytical, doesn�t it? But all I mean to say is that it often takes me hours of replaying conversations with the Aisho in my head before I get to the point where I think,oh, that�s what he was saying, or, that�s what he meant, and that some of that can sometimes be directly attributed to the languages that we both heard and/or spoke growing up. (In other words, you think Spanish to English or Japanese to English is not challenging enough? Try Spanish to Japanese to English and back to Spanish to Japanese.) The conversation came around to a couple of people who used to work in the restaurant when the Aisho first worked there. One woman had recently returned to the restaurant and asked the Aisho out for a drink. He had refused, as it turns out that he had once been engaged to her sister. (I thought of x�s sister exploits and was glad in the Aisho�s case to find out that there are still some men out there with some sense of propriety.) This led into the whole Aisho�s once being engaged to but never coming around to marrying this young woman. I won�t spill the story here�it�s not my story and not my business�but it sounded relatively unpleasant to me. The Aisho tried at first to change the subject by saying, �That was all a long time ago!� And M�ya and Fu agreed, �Yes. A long time ago,� but then went on to tell the whole story as they remembered it, including the crude things the young woman had done when she quit the restaurant and exactly how it was that she and the Aisho hadn�t ended up married after all. (Later, when the Aisho and Fu got up from the table, M�ya took the opportunity to tell me a bit more of her opinion about the young woman in question, as well as how the Aisho�s whole demeanor had been affected when he was involved with her, but (and she didn�t use these words, but the general gist of the message was) he�s both better and better off now.) Fu and Aisho came back and M�ya told a story about being hit on by another waitress�s unknowing boyfriend. (And I have to say, the guy sounded like he was suffering from a huge case of, as Sophistica calls it, CDS�China Doll Syndrome�a kind of dating disease which leads men to serially go after only Asian women, similar to the way some serial killers only stalk long-haired brunettes. Anyway, it�s hard to blame the guy, as M�ya is drop-dead gorgeous and has an ageless beauty that I would hack off my right hand off to have.) The story progressed from M�ya being �90% sure� that it was the waitress�s boyfriend to her being �120% sure� that it was the guy. Fu and Aisho were sworn to secrecy over the matter. By this time, it was getting to be midnight and the Aisho was getting antsy to get having to play pool with me out of the way and get home to bed. He stood up, washed out the ice cream bowl, and came to sit on the arm of the couch. They talked very briefly about other sushi places, and then about how the restaurant they all work in used to have a stage for performances by a dancer and a singer who wore a kimono and wig to perform. Aisho did a perfect imitation of the woman who used to sing by pretending to hold a microphone very close to his mouth and saying in very high-pitched, Japanese-accented English, �Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to sing�� M�ya, Fu and I laughed. �All you need is a kimono and wig, Aisho,� I said. �I don�t think so,� he replied. We said our goodnights and left. On the way to the pool hall, the Aisho told me that he had been surprised about their remembering the woman he had been engaged to and all her exploits. I asked why. He said that he had, for the last ten years or so, not known that Fu and M�ya knew that he hadn�t taken part in one of her more insulting moves. (According to her, M�ya had been �110% sure� from day one that Aisho had not been involved.) That�s not the kind of thing people forget, I thought. And, it�s a testament to his�and their�nature that they never held any of it against him.
More lies:
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