Free Yourself

Definitely the best moments in their summer of 2022. 6, 7 children played together in natural water swimming pool for two days, the whole time. Such sweet children with sweet names, Ocean, Sky, Zen, Sequoia... Hippie names no? Yoga-loving white parents attending Sun God's worshipping ceremony, same chanting as Hare Krishna in the streets of Berkeley, London's too. Thanked the generosity and abundance of mother Earth.

Goddesses' statues every corner. 40-degree hot spring room, right outside the window of sauna room, with wind chimes next to cold pool of natural stream. Only Goddesses. Make me miss childhood back in China, temples filled with colorful Goddess statues. Celebrating the birthday of my godmothers - seven sister Goddesses Mama. Kids running around, in the smoke of burning papers and incenses, in the loud noise of firecrackers, drums, suonas and flutes. Gods too, each assigned to different jobs, earth, kitchen, ocean, river, rain, mountain, forest...

Besides white hippies, general norm sets to be super cool to have some connection to India. Young Russian wives to Indian husbands, different kinds of mixed families to Indian men and women. Besides Ocean, Sky, Zen, Sequoia, the coolest hippie names must be Shiva and Aditi. "Aditi, a Goddess right? My husband an Indian too." "Shiva?! Shiva I worship, the yoga God!"

Gentle white man from our city tattooed Durga Maa into his whole back. Durga Maa with 10 hands and 10 weapons. The most powerful, strength beyond all three main male Gods. "Durga Maa our main deity! Our village celebrates Durga Puja as the main festival!" "She is mine too!"

Free men and women walking with pride. Freedom, freedom to choose own way of living and worship. Against establishment and oppression, against inequality and discrimination, against ignorance and chained-up minds. Meditation, yoga, enlightenment, spiritual freedom. A moment with my own world, world of my own deities. 

Control your mind. Rid of fear and doubt. It's all in your mind. It's only in your mind. Broaden your mind. Be brave, embrace, to love, to live. To be free. 

2022-07-29

Raj was telling me, "You are really funny." In response to my question, "Do you like my recent posing photos in the car?" 

"Funny?! What's that supposed to mean? I'm not as funny as the comedians." 

"No no, comedians are comedians, you are a normal person, just like us. But you are so different from any of us. The world needs people like you. Without you, it would be so gray to live, so dull. No colors and no fragrances."

"Ok, okay, keep coming, I like that."

Got so many playdate and birthday invites already. Not in the mood yet, feeling so tired from the soccer coach's preparation. Also because we won't be here over the weekend. Not this weekend, not next weekend, not many many future weekends. 

Conveniently, I blame Raj for not being able to let our children attend all those grand birthday parties. If we don't attend, then we won't need to host. I have never even once hosted my children's birthday parties. It just ain't in this un-American mom's blood. 

I don't hate but I never like those parties... I could tag along, and show up in a happy mood. But never expect me to be the host mom of such parties. My children don't need those to feel secure and loved. We will have a little family gathering, some quiet time with people who are the most important to them. We do have playdates with our close friends, classmates, sports mates, no? 

I really don't understand the need for children's grand birthday parties. Celebrate the day your mom almost died in the maternity ward? The day your parents' life turned upside down and were chained up to be your slaves forever? 

When I was growing up, everything was a business. My parents did host my 10th-year birthday party, people came for dinner and gave a lot of red pockets that never came to me. 

I was not allowed to be slightly invovled with money until I went to college in Xiamen at 18 years old. Everything was dealt with until I met Raj and eloped with him... Had absolutely no idea about money from teens through adulthood, never had a chance to build up that concept lol... never got bothered by it, never had the urge to have more, and never truly cherished any of it either... maybe that's the foundation of my ultimate happiness and "funny" personality. 

I just don't give a fuck... 

So silly for any human being in any circumstance, flaunting the wealth or "opportunities" associated with wealth, in front of me. Extremely absurd for some to think they could grill me down by demeaning me to be a "housewife who has no income and is detached from reality". Pure ignorance, no? Never talked about my xxx years in the past and in the future, nobody knows about it. Calling me a "useless housewife" only shows the insecurity deep down in their consciousness and the severe discrimination they endure or impose upon others in their daily life. 

Hey, whatever people say to you, only reflects who they are, never who you are. 

Anyways, I don't like children's birthday parties. Period. 

The slipper incident..

Suddenly remembered this little incident between me and my daddy friend J.

It happened when we were having a swimming playdate, just J and I, and the two kids obviously. Before we went to the water, Aditi and I came back to the sunbathing beds after changing to swimsuits. I saw my slippers lying on the floor, left and right neatly side by side, both bottoms up. I was like: "Wow... Did I?... Was I?... Must be me magically flipping them to land in such cool positions? Wow... Must be me... Did anybody see that? Woohoo... I am so freaking dang legendary today..." Then I saw my daughter's slippers. "Did I?... Did she?!...Did I?... No... Must be her... She's so freaking legendary today too... Like mommy like daughter..." Aditi's slippers also neatly lay side by side on the floor, both bottom sides up.

Then we swam, two hours later, we took shower, packed everything and were ready to leave. J said a bunch of stuff, one of the sentences was, "You know I like to flip the slippers upside down in the sun so my feet won't be burned." 

"Ya right! Okay, bye! It's a great day playing with you guys, see you next time!"

Five minutes later in the car... 

"What?! Oh my dear goddesses!" I just couldn't close my mouth...  

I told Raj one day, I was like, "See, I've never been with an Asian boyfriend, I mean boyfriend, like in a relationship, but it could be super awesome right? So gentle, so much down to details, all those small things they would do to you..."

Raj just couldn't stop laughing, "It's not all Asians okay? I never saw your family do that! hahaha, definitely some Japanese stuff... Japanese culture... J is surely more Japanese than Chinese! I grew up barefoot! Playing in the mud under the hot summer sun... When your feet are wet after swimming, nothing would feel too hot okay?! hahaha! If some hot slippers could bother you, how can you deal with India after all? hahaha!"

I guess being with such gentle people have a lot of upsides, but I would be forever scared if I am not able to notice the stuff my love does to love me and I keep making him feel that I don't love and value him enough hahahah...

At the end of the day, I will always prefer being able to be very open and straightforward. Shout out whatever is in our minds, discuss, debate, fight, fight with words even fists, then calm down, say sorry and talk about everything. I prefer to never hold back but let out, I prefer someone I am able to share everything with, someone I can always talk to.

Doesn't mean my daddy friend J is not open and straightforward, he is the same as us actually. I always found it super easy to talk to him cause he knows a lot about everything too, Asia, India, history, culture, education, technology... So lucky to have a parent friend with who I could talk about the topics I'm interested in! 

But I will hide my slippers next time when we have a swimming playdate! Ha!

Model through my day

Who would have thought?! Ha!

I know it's super cool, because I keep getting comments everywhere I go: "I really like your bag!" "What a cool purse!" "I love your shoes!" Yes, I know I'm super cool, wait, maybe I'm the definition of cool 😎

2022-7-28

Do all parent volunteers in sports clubs work full-time somewhere? Such chaos in the soccer club this year, practice starting next week but feels like most parent coaches still heads in the cloud, no idea what they are doing... 

Shiva team's assistant coach just volunteered now after I sent out the new season starting off email, he will need at least a whole week to finish a bunch of online courses, fingerprint, background checks and all that... Aditi team's assistant coach, I thought he got it, then I called him, he had absolutely no clue what's been happening, hadn't logged in anywhere, no registration done, nothing, didn't even know practice starting next week... I guess most parents are still in the summer break mode...

I just spent a full few days, slowly progressing with my "good coach" safety courses. Finally today I got time to reach out to Shiva's team, notified all families about the season, and compiled their contact info together. Still need a few hours to do that for Aditi's team. Then I will use the next few days to plan out both teams' practices as well as collect field equipment and balls. The first practice is on Monday!... 

Who said this is Not A Full-Time Job?!

Whilst Chinese people are spending so much time online, doing nothing! Why can't they come out and volunteer more... Whenever I post some video talking in Mandarin, the viewing hours are always long, significantly long. I guess a lot of Chinese do sit down and finish listening to whatever heck that I am talking about. No wonder so many Chinese online commentators could just open a live cam, keep speaking speaking and speaking, and make a living out of it!  

I should make more random chatting videos in Mandarin lol... Whatever revenue I get, goes to TM for the Tanzanian women and babies. Why not, whenever some topic pops up in my mind, I will just talk it out! After all these years, I found that Chinese people are very into such direct communications. Feels like I am directly talking to them I guess. No preparation, no editing, whatever it's on your mind, based solely on your past experience and knowledge. Yum, raw!  

And how come they are always online and watching so many videos! Get out there and do some social work!!

Anyways...

Work on

Indeed I'm not able to write poems anymore. 

At least for now.

I know the reason. I always knew. 

But I couldn't and don't want to face it.

It has not been easy, at all. 

It took me a long time to stop the tears.

What it's meant to be, let it be. 

It's all just in my mind, anyway.

It's all just in my mind.

Then just let me put my mind into work.

Work to build a better place for the beautiful children around the world.

Coach in the making & the metal for me & them m*f*s

Thought my full-time job won't start until September, but the heck, I am gonna be a soccer coach from next Monday!! 5 times a week on the field, got to plan the practices, strategize for games and lead the teams.

I Had Never Played Soccer, Neither Watched a Soccer Match!! Well, actually, during Raj's Berkeley Ph.D. years, or should I say, during my Berkeley xxx years, I did play as a stopgap for the Geography Ph.D. folks many times. And ya, I did so well on defense, ran so fast and blocked the rival team like a pro. I remember the Geography folks shouting: "Momo, You Are The Great Wall!!" lol... good times...

Guess I should be fine then, just need to act like a proper coach who knows her shit. Got to act with authority lol... I think the most important thing should be planning, gonna divide each one-hour practice into different sections and drag the team along with my schedule, gonna look at my watch with a frown, dang gotta power up my last-century watches, and move on to the next section... plus the before and after 1-minute talk/summing-up each practice and game. Good that I observed other baseball coaches last season and I really don't think any of them could play baseball now with the big fat bellies. Just got to act like you know your shit, and you are the man!

Talking about men, I finally found my custom-made piece of equipment. Well, not that I wish to use it, but ya, it's for sure custom made for women like me. If I was still in China, that piece of metal must have been put on my face for years by now. Cheers to those people who think 17th-century stuff has nothing to do with them. I truly don't recall any era humans ever stopped walking on the edge of a cliff, never more than 2 steps away from falling off, into the endless darkness. And that, has nothing to do with religion, skin color, size of the penis and all that. 

Funny thing is deep down, I have no hard feelings about this specific piece of metal that's custom-made for me. Because at least it shall keep me alive, instead of, for example, hanging my neck to a rope in a tree or on a wall, or stoning me in a hole on the ground to a mashed pile of blood and fleshes. Guess what, because I have a priceless functioning womb that could be harvested! 

custom made for women like me.. dang..

https://youtube.com/shorts/HYvw3QqWizI?feature=share

Although I didn't got time at all to follow through with this issue: On Youtube Defamation and Slander - Dec. 2021, my SEO maneuver worked perfectly fine. Now a Google search on my original Chinese name "郑墨沫" (or web name "辛格莫默", plus all those words like "marrying an Indian", "mixed-blood" kind of stuff), the first page came up being the same keyword search in Youtube, and that Only My Videos lol! Used to have so many of those m*f* defaming videos, seems like they are all taken down or out-of-date. Didn't waste any time on this, except that day with the initial complaints. 

I'm just too good. Got them m*f*s.