looped in memory lane

Today my thoughts are on my family dynamic. After traveling to Vietnam and seeing the big mess of a knot that everyone tangled themselves in, it makes me fearful of the distancing paths family members are now taking everywhere. I always grew up with a strong sense of family ties because of my cousins and relatives who live within a 5 minute proximity. Also it seemed that family meant automatic friends. You had to find a way to like one another or get along because well, if you couldn't rely on your family, then who could you rely on?

In Vietnam, that principle doesn't apply so readily anymore. People hold up hurt feelings and no one tries to find a compromise anymore because, well simply put...it's much easier and less of a heartache to just break off ties than to try and cling on so the fighting can continue. I learned that lesson from Trang herself. Even though she says work is extremely busy and she hasn't gotten a chance to relax at all, I still doubt I will ever hear from her again until maybe the summer when Me, Bo, and Danny go back.

Now with family here, the usual cousin hang group consists of Cathy, myself, Danny, Vivian and on occasion, Khoa. This has been the "after school club" since I came to America when I first started playing and babysitting Vivian. Our adventures covered every inch of Om Noi's backyard, to Vivian's bedrooms, to every shop in the local malls. There were years of good fun and lots of laughs.

I left all of that four years ago when I left for college. After the upsetting events of Cathy's poor decisions in college and the effects on our whole family, I couldn't turn to those old memories for comfort anymore. It seemed like every joyous moment was for nothing after the lies and deceit. So I kept my back turned for all four of those years. I chose not to care.

So today, Cathy invited Danny and I to go to a meet and greet with some of the artists who worked on Tim Burton's new Alice and Wonderland movie. It took place at the Nucleus art gallery in Alhambra where they displayed a variety of other art work inspired by Lewis Carroll's short novels. The artists first showed off some of their art work and pieces that they worked on for the movie, describing the process of taking a drawing into a more rendered graphic picture and then combining several ideas with landscape, textiles, lighting, and actors into one completed finished picture. I came to the Meet & Greet with the expectation of hearing about the unique interpretation of the novel and new spin the artists were trying to add to Tim Burton's version. However th emore they discussed about the thought processed and how all ideas were accepted, the art of Alice seemed to lose its edge as one collaborated and cohesive piece of work into a variety of ideas worked in together. I suppose it's more difficult to have one cohesive piece of work when you have hundreds of artists all drawing and editing the same characters.

Anyways my critique on Alice will be for another day's blog. In the meantime while I was listening to the presentation, Cathy and Danny decided to meander around the block because they quickly grew bored of the talking. I didn't mind too much because it wasn't as in dept and interesting as I had hoped. Afterwards, we wandered over to a shop called "Cha for Tea" which served a variety of fusion tea blends and Asian simple meals like curry and rice. We ordered two bags of fried crispy chicken and I got a green tea ice cream cooler with boba while the other two ordered the Love at First Sight with Apple Jelly and boba.

I feel like I'm getting much into the details of the day rather than just reiterating the conclusion of the day's events.

My overall opinion of today was that it while there were interesting and entertaining moments, I felt like a large amount of time and money was heavily wasted. Not that I think spending time with my family is a waste of time or money. On the contrary, I'm much less frugal around them than with anyone else, including myself. But I felt that the jokes were semi-out dated and the humor unchanged. Maybe I really am becoming a prudish, old, crazy, cat lady after all. I felt like our conversations were juvenile and repetitive. Come to think of it, I can't recall anything that we talked about today, or if I even said that much.

It's not that I'm trying to distance myself from my family. I actually think singing loudly to Disney songs is fun to do as well as walking around to explore areas. But there's something about today's events that leave me feeling tired and unfulfilled. Usually at the end of a long fun-filled day, there's a calming satisfaction in the bottom of one's stomach. Like a cat filled with contentment and his only desire is to lie flat and calmly release that content through purrs in between steady breathing. I feel nothing of that sort.

Perhaps I have changed too much. Or maybe, there hasn't been enough change to my happy family dynamic. I don't know.