hannah.ananas

Dinner and a shower…

Tonight, I ate the same food at dinner as I used after dinner to scrub my body in the shower.

Slightly absurd and utterly intriguing, is it not?

I’ll just tell you: It is.

You see, when I was living in Japan, I learned first in Okinawa about how this food that was regularly a side dish in Japanese meals was also found as the base for certain jiggling and super-foaming soaps – trust me, this was a very odd and confusing conversation for me to be having, especially in Japanese, as the shop workers tried to explain to me how something that sounds like the Japanese pronunciation/version of a drinking alcohol is actually a food, and that this food is what makes the jiggling, funny soap here in front of me.

Suffice it to say, I bought a few of these spectacular soaps, mind partially blown by the soap itself and partially by the whole discovery of its being something I somewhat often ate.

(The next time I use one, I’ll share photos, I’m almost certain – it is really cool!)

Now, this plant is called konjac, and is pronounced just like the alcoholic beverage.

Therefore, in Japanese, they are both pronounced the same way and written in Roman characters the same way: konnyaku.

(The signs had the Japanese written, too, but it wouldn’t have been the first time that I’d seen a foreign word written as though it were a Japanese word [e.g. using hiragana instead of katakana], so I didn’t trust it entirely.)

However, I eventually understood what non Earth it was – sort of, anyway – and suddenly started noticing it more and more around me in life.

Tonight, I cooked some “konnyaku threads”, which look like little knots made of about seven white strings of rubber each, and had them with some other Japanese-esque food I prepared.

Then, for my shower, I happily pulled out for the first time my “Natural Konjac Puff”, a body scrubber similar in size, shape, and texture to a cut loofah… except that it went from the rough and crispy of a loofah to the soft and squishy foamy of a sea sponge, once it was wet and soaped.

Also, when I first opened the package for the puff, I smelled the puff, and it had a very similar smell to my konjac food from shortly beforehand- that rubbery, slightly salty, and weird smell that isn’t exactly bad, but isn’t delightful either…

Totally odd and crazy experience.

P.S. Here is a great page that talks about konjac in mug more detail.

Post-a-day 2019

Gullible

Back in high school, there was, as is likely often the case with high schoolers, a phase of everyone telling each other that “‘gullible’ is written on the ceiling.”

In the middle of that phase of adolescence, I was hanging out one day with a couple or few friends, just outside the school theatre.

Outside the entry doors to the theatre, the building’s roof continues to the sides, creating a large concrete-based overhang/roof over the walkway immediately surrounding the theatre.

We were hanging out in this area, stage left of the entry doors.

Being my usual self, I was browsing my surroundings, including the ceiling above me.

Curiosity struck me, when I came across something unique.

“What does ‘gullible’ mean?” I asked those with me.

They paused to look at me and scoff, or something of the sort.

Having received no useful answer, I explained the reason for my question.

Pointing at the ceiling, I told them, “It’s written up there, on the ceiling.”

The irony of the event and my statement finally struck me, when I learned the definition of the word later on, but I was met with little interest in looking to where I was pointing at the time – no one trusted or believed me.

I eventually – not sure if it was almost immediately or weeks or months later – started telling people about this incident, always chuckling at the whole affair, and was usually met with disbelief and distrust – only on occasion did someone believe me and share in the hilarity of the story and situation with me.

I worked usually in vain to explain how someone could go find the very word himself or herself, always wondering if it even was still there.

Today, more than a decade later, I went back to that same area, and dropped my head back to scan the ceiling…

Over to the side, just as I remembered it, in its pencil-lead-looking ink and terrible handwriting that was likely snuck up there in a huge hurry while teachers were out of sight, was this:

(And a slightly zoomed-in version:)

Snazzy, huh? ;P

Post-a-day 2019

Moving forward well

As I pursue each day a little bit more of those things I dream about and desperately want to become my reality (though am totally terrified of having become my reality, because, let’s be real, how could I be able and worthy of being that awesome?), I somehow feel a sense of calm and comfort settling over and around and through me and my life.

Preparing for bed at night, I have feelings of excitement and delight – subtle as they are, they are there.

Things are still kind of a mess around me in my life (even physically, for that matter, because I haven’t even finished moving in entirely), but everything somehow feels right – it is all moving comfortably in the direction it feels like it is all meant to go.

Imagine how nice things look when traffic moves perfectly, cars zooming along together in their designated lanes and directions, as though they are designed to do just that…

Even better, imagine those blood cells zooming through our veins, perfectly comfortable, and not even needing to be confident, for they have no reason to doubt their task and/or their ability to complete it – they were made for this, and they are doing it.

That’s how these pieces of my life feel now, and more and more of them keep jumping on the train of properly purposeful movement in their natural flow directions… as I breathe and am nourished, so they move and are bountiful, comfortable, going and at ease.

Post-a-day 2019

That moon, though

Okay, last night was the whole full lunar eclipse slash full moon slash blood moon slash (I forget what it’s called at present, where the moon is at its closest to Earth……ha! Got it!) perigee, making it a Super Blood Moon.

(Man, that’s a lot in one breath!)

As Daniel Day Lewis’s film declared, there will be blood – and there was…. well, it was red, anyway…. for a few minutes…

In the spirit of sharing and celebration, and in delighting in my own joy found in last night’s activities in nature, I share with you these photos that I semi-spontaneously took – I just happened to have my camera with me, and so decided to give it a go…

… and it worked really well!

I started in a parking lot, and then rushed home to pull out the tripod for the choicest and most surprising parts.

Enjoy!

(FYI they moon and the camera moved a bit, so the moon isn’t in the same spot in each photo, but I think you can manage. 😉 )

Post-a-day 2019

Sunday, Moonday

Today was awesome on so many levels, I’m finding it difficult to go to bed (totally separate from the fact that I was given and I consumed caffeine this evening), because it is all so freshly wonderful, and I don’t want to forget or end the awesome day.

I did some errands that I wanted to do – usually a difficult task for me on my own.

I hung out for hours at a coffee shop with a friend, she working on her homework (and eventually abandoning it to chat with people around), and I working on my first interview (!!!!!) for my interview series I am starting as part of my weblog(!!!).

It is totally longer than I would have liked for it to be (an hour [yikes]), but that is okay – it leaves me room for improvement, through and through.

I now have a taste for what is good to do beforehand and during the interview, both for myself and for the person I’m interviewing, and that is a big part of the first one, anyway – it is, after all, a learning experience.

So, look out for that one coming soon – it’s really interesting, though I do say so myself!

Then, tonight, while waiting for the moon magic to happen, I was asked to go for a drink with someone, and I semi-accepted (also a sort of big deal for me).

I somehow got everyone working at the place interested in the moon, merely by sharing about it and going to check its progress regularly, and so the person who invited me for the drink, after I reminded him that he was planning to go for a drink and that I was going along as company, he and I hung out watching the moon instead, before we each went home, and I pulled out the tripod to go for some quality photos.

So, I not only didn’t end up in a situation and circumstance I disliked, but I was honest and ended up doing exactly what I wanted, merely by sharing and being honest.

And the moon was awesome… photos to come (once I get them organized on my computer that currently is charging. 😛

So, a good day on many levels for me. 🙂

Hasta mañana.

Post-a-day 2019

Photos!

Okay, one ended up not happening after all, but the first photo thing happened today, and, not only was it a successful photo shoot, but it was also an awesome adventure!

I was doing photos for a friend who is a curator at a museum, and so I got to go see (and photograph, of course – that’s why I was there) the new museum setup before it has even opened its doors to the public!

It was something wonderful to see, and also a delightful learning experience regarding all of the objects and models and things on display within the museum!

I really enjoyed the whole time of it.

Then, looking through the photos tonight – which I was rather terrified to do, and which I only did because I’d given my word to the friend that I would check over them tonight – I discovered that almost all of them looked great!

I just need to redo a few, which was already expected, anyway, due to the fact that not everything was finished being set up in the museum yet.

So, yay!

Also, when going through them, I went ahead and loaded the previous two rounds of photos I’d done… and those.. were.. awesome!

I was totally inspired by my own photos – a concept which then doubly blew my mind with inspiration!

How cool is that?!

Yay!

Post-a-day 2019

Passions…?

Tomorrow, I have on my schedule, somewhat unexpectedly, two very different photo sessions scheduled.

Ones where I take the photos for someone else…

And one of them has even requested my photo-taking ability for pay…(!!!)

I am sometimes terrified, whenever I see my current place and undetermined path from the eyes of those around me…, and it is times like this that I can trust that feeling deep inside me that I am exactly and perfectly in the right spot and heading in the right direction for me and my life right now.

🙂

Post-a-day 2018

It’s all in the attitude

Do you ever find yourself walking through a store, looking at all the items for sale around you, and feeling utterly sick at the thought of it all?

Walking through a Marshalls today with my aunt and cousin, on a trip my cousin had been wanting for a while for some household things, I had this experience as I walked to the bathroom, just before leaving.

I thought of my best friend, and how she had lived in The Gambia…. the way things are there…., and I thought of how things are in so many similar places, where air conditioning and mattresses and safe showering and clean water are not a given but a rarity and a practically-unachievable luxury… and I felt repulsed by the few items – some foods and soaps and a bottle cleaner for my water bottles and tea bottles – I myself had pulled out, let alone the overwhelming sense of the thousands of items surrounding me that even I found entirely unnecessary and wasteful…

And I felt terrible…

And then I looked into it further than merely being upset…

And I saw that this is the life and the part of the world and the lifestyle in which I have been placed and in which I have opted to remain… there is much I dislike about it all, and yet there is more than enough to keep me in it, wanting to be part of it… to some degree, anyway…

And it reminded me of what I would tell my students whenever they complained about school rules or homework from other teachers or the administration, that this is the school and the society in which they are choosing to participate, and so they can follow the rules and either get over it or work toward change, or they can go somewhere else to have different rules… as long as they select to be at this school, though, they are agreeing to follow this school’s rules.

And so my Marshalls visit was a lot like that for me – I want to be in this culture, and so I have to accept the ‘rules’ this culture follows… I can work toward change, as I already do, and I can work for myself to buy and to use and to produce what I feel is appropriate, as I also already do, and I can encourage and empower others to do the same, all while accepting that this is the way things currently are here, whether I like them or not.

And I totally wanted to go check the dumpster, instead of walking the inside of the store, in hopes of preventing the sad waste that likely was back there… unfortunately, circumstances did not quite allow for such a move today.

So it goes… an attitude of gratitude is a good way to start, and then we can make some real progress. 🙂

Post-a-day 2019

Memories

My cousin and I were talking tonight about old, old memories in our lives.

Growing up, I had a situation that was incredibly unique at the time (and that still is a bit unique nowadays), in which my parents each had children from a previous spouse, only had me together, married when I was three, and divorced one another when I was four.

My siblings on my mom’s side not only lived in the same neighborhood as I did, but my mom and I were regularly at their dad’s house, spending time with them and, even, their dad, who was my mom’s first husband, but with whom my mom was no longer involved in such a relationship.

My siblings on my dad’s side moved to Georgia (until they kind of moved back, off and on, one by one, starting when I was about nine), and so were only around for certain holidays and for what I guess to have been about a month each summer.

My cousin pointed out that she remembered being often at the place my mom and I lived for many years together after she split up from my dad, the one that was in the neighborhood with my brothers and their dad.

I, too, recalled that they often were there visiting us, and we often were at their house (two hours away, by the way) visiting them.

She then presented the interesting and confounding concept of accepting the idea of someone seeing one’s cousins more often than seeing one’s own siblings…, because that’s really how it was in the first decade and a half of my life, so far as my mom’s sister’s children and my dad’s children were concerned.

I have many more memories from earlier childhood with those cousins than I do with my siblings on my dad’s side.

Certainly, I saw my brothers from my mom all the time, almost daily…, but my cousins were, as I can pull up old school activities and projects to show, some of my favorite people in the world, and they were often on my mind, because I saw them often…, such was not the case with my siblings on my dad’s side.

Sure, I cared about them, and I had spectacular memories from the brief time we all spent in the same house when my parents were married to one another, but I really think we could say that I had more a relationship with and attitude towards them that people have with cousins, rather than one with siblings.

So, my half brothers were like my brothers, my cousins were like my half siblings, and my other half siblings were like my cousins… relationship- and attitude-wise, anyway.

Kind of crazy, huh?

I hadn’t really ever thought much about it, because, as my cousin also pointed out tonight, it can be amazing what kinds of things we just accept as children, not concerned in the least about whether they are uncommon or absurd.

I guess the absurdity doesn’t surprise me, of course, because, well, even now, absurd is normal in my life, as this same cousin so graciously pointed out to me a few years ago. 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Men

Are all men alike?

Will every man urinate pathetically, getting urine on the toilet and the floor around it, even in his own home?

Seriously, if they are all going to be like that, I kind of don’t want one… that’s just so ew, I can’t figure out how other people can stand to live with them and share bathrooms with them.

I mean, what is the point of potty training them, anyway, if they just get it all over the place as adults and never seem to care?

Also, why does every man’s bathroom in my near-age bracket contain a boatload of icky short hairs that just make it look like he pulls them out of his nose every morning?

I mean, really, guys?!

Come on…

I think seeing a guy’s bathroom would give me a big heads up as to whether he even would be worth considering, because I need a clean bathroom in my home in life.

Period. ;P

Post-a-day 2019