TADIOTO

Catching a moment of calmness after the past stormy months.  The latest storm was this afternoon when I went into the guest bedroom, behind the terrace.   

I was standing in the bathroom when I heard some noises.

I didn’t react fast enough.  

I came out and found the doors locked. I was shut in, locked in the damn place.  

The housekeeper keeps locking all the doors.  From now on, cell phone with me, even in bathroom.

Except it doesn’t work inside the house.   

Outside, on the balcony, down the street.  Not inside the house. Viettel, your signals ain’t so strong.  

Otherwise it’s been calm – I’ve needed it.  For months.  What’s involved in packing up a life, three decades in one country and moving, for good, to another, with an ailing mother?

Miracle I made it to the last night.  Ticket and passport and a seat assignment on China airlines.  Last day in SFO.

I was moving things in my Fillmore apartment.  From one pile to the other, not knowing what to do next.  Somehow I managed to list the old BMW on Craig’s List.  A few phone calls immediately.  Yes, you can see the car tomorrow morning.  And please get it off my hand because I was leaving, that day, and I was nowhere near ready.  Are you kiddin?  A couple of nights before I managed to get Gary of Manja.org to help me get this blog and website together.  Oh, the patience he has.  Gary you save me.

Other kind souls saved me.  Mighty Mountain Warriors’ Pearl Wong took time out from her rehearsals (she’s playing Maya Lin – how cool is that?) to come over on my last night and quietly folded my kimonos and T-shirts comme-il-faut, properly, like this, exactly.  Memoirs of a Chinese Geisha must have helped.  While Pearl folded, Chi-hui Yang opened the wine.  We mentioned again something about reproducing a part of the Center’s Film Festival in Ha Noi.  (You should be used to calling it THE CENTER by now, stead of NAATA.)  Kevin Chen, the rock of the Intersection for the Arts, quietly put away some of the piles of papers I’d collected for thirty years.  Kevin always knew where my wine glass was.

Jane Kim found on few inches on the floor - Locus needed her, and surely her school board campaign needed her  attention.  But Jane came…. and sat to talk to Mina Kim.  I was standing around, handing Taro Goto items from the walls or left on the floor.  He somehow balanced himself on a retro chair I’d wrapped up in drapes and plastic, without the legs.  Sam Chanse had packed the stereo the day before, and took a couple of things to KSW.  Now she was wearing my old Fedora hat from NY, sitting amongs the boxes.

I was unable to think.  No one mentioned the obvious.  There was no way I could clear the apartment out and get on the plane on time the next day.  I had 45 boxes and cartons of all sizes.  And three suitcases.  And piles of things on every inch of the floor.   And I still had to put labels on the boxes.  And I was leaving for good, and couldn’t do anything.  Thanks to all of these friends.  We took some time to play with my robots.  And then I packed the rest of my things.  Just before midnight, we burned an architectural model in the fireplace.  Silence in the room.  Silence. 

Then I packed and repacked and threw things away and read some old letters and labelled things and chain smoked and eight o’clock came: the phone rang and the movers were there and by nine they had loaded all the boxes.

I needed a glass of cognac.  South Airport Boulevard.  Shipping company guy was Cambodian guy who said less than three words to every question I had.  There were comforting words.  And my bike couldn’t be picked up.  It needed to be crated.  And labelled and shipped.  I had to pick up other things.  Like my visa.  And permission papers.  For the ashes.  My dad’s and sister’s.  In Colma City.  City of ashes and tombstones.