Thoughts – Page 4 – Twelve-toed Traveler

A Life Guide to Packing Light

July 25, 2014Posted in Thoughts, Traveled PlacesTagged advice, college graduate, europe, italy, life, mid-20's, pack light, poem, travel, travel tips, walking stick, what to packLeave a comment

A Life Guide to Packing Light

Pack light.

Have a plan—and keep it flexible.

Carry only the essentials.

Do not accept unmarked baggage from others.

Do not have others carry your baggage for you.

Know when to leave those belongings behind.

If items become too plentiful, give them away.

Accept gifts in return.

Heavy hearts and containers of regret

exceeding 3.4 oz

must be checked.

Bubble wrap your best relationships.

Handle with care.

Do not fear the unknown.

Tread lightly and if you must carry a big stick,

make it a walking stick.

Leave it at the trailhead for the next pair of dusty boots.

You will be neither the first nor the last.

And please, send postcards.

The First of Many by Some

July 19, 2014July 25, 2014Posted in College Graduate Problems, ThoughtsTagged Adventure, college graduate, experience, First travel, Maiden voyage, Nepal, Sea Turtles, travel, Turtles HatchingLeave a comment

The small turtles emerge from their soft opaque eggs. They push their noses up above the sand and in turn make mad dashes across the beach down to the ocean beyond. They have no prior knowledge of the sea but these turtles’ instinctual need has been weaved into their subconscious of centuries past. This lifelong adventure has finally arrived and as the moon emerges from behind the clouds, a trained ear can almost hear the sound of flippers sliding into the waves.

On Tuesday morning, I watched Tony lug a heavy black suitcase, small backpack and ukelele case down the driveway and into my car. I had offered Tony, a high school friend’s younger brother, a ride back to Northampton and he had graciously accepted. After graduating from Amherst College in May, Tony wanted to make some last minute trips before leaving the country. His final destination: Nepal.

Tony will spend the better part of a year living in Kathmandu, living at a school and teaching Nepalese children. This trip will be Tony’s first time on the airplane. It will also be his first trip out of the country and the first time he will spend 10 months in a place where the primary language isn’t English. A fleet of maiden voyages rolled into one massive vessel.

On the car ride to Northampton, we talked about the experience and value of visiting a foreign country. He asked me about homesickness and culture shock. I told him about the transition returning home and the sad reality that your family and closest friends will not really care about your experience so different from their daily lives. I told him to take pictures and journal often. I told him this trip would teach him as much about himself as the world as a whole.

I distinctly remember my first international trip to Paris and first airplane flight to Tucson. I remember the six months in Denmark, navigating a foreign city as if it was my home and all the countries since then in my journal, camera and memory. My love of travel hatched early and since graduating high school, I spent every year planning my next great adventure.

For some, the first life-changing travel experience happens much later in life or does not happen at all. I can only hope that every person who wants to see a new city, visit a new country or explore a new culture has the opportunity to do so in his or her life. It is not so important when the turtles reach the ocean as long as they make it off the shore.

Moving Home

July 12, 2014Posted in College Graduate Problems, ThoughtsTagged college graduate, dad, Father, home, kindess, living, Living at home, mid-20's, mom, mother, parents, understandingLeave a comment

I have returned to my parents home. I have moved all my books, clothing, artwork, half knitted scarves and various kitchenware from my cozy space in Northampton to my parents’ living room floor. From the floor, the stuff has moved to the couch and into large bins and smaller bins that are stacked one on top of each other in the hallway of the narrow second floor hallway. I have inserted myself back into the home where I grew up in a way that feels strange and strangely familiar.

And to their credit, both my parents have let me slide back into their world without a fuss. In our family puzzle, my own multi-sided piece fits back in with minimal wedging of grooves and notches. I would be lying if there weren’t disagreements at the dinner table or prolonged silences in the car. I do not pretend that our little yellow house is absolute bliss from sunup to sundown. But I appreciate the extent to which both my mother and father have gracefully accepted the immediate and lasting presence of their unemployed 24 year old daughter back under their roof. [And if they have begun the countdown, it’s 3 weeks and 5 days.]

How often to we treat those closest to our hearts with indifference and exasperation? The rivers of tolerance and grace, which flow from us so willingly with strangers and acquaintances, run dry as soon as we step over the WELCOME mat of our own homes. Those who deserve the most kindness and love seem to pull the short stick and our shorter temper. The people I care the most about are the people who accept me for my imperfect but truest self. But is my truest self unkind and condescending? I think not.

So I’ll try to take a deep breath before I speak. Treat my parents and my loved ones with the respect they deserve instead of taking their love and support for granted. Transcend daily disagreements. This continued process is one that I am working on every day. Every. Single. Day.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

The Story, My Story.

July 9, 2014Posted in Thoughts, Traveled PlacesTagged Austin, domain name, right to write, travel, twelvetoedtraveler10 Comments

“Who owns the story, the person who lives it or the person who write it?”

-Roxana Robinson, “The Right to Write”, New York Times

I came across this article yesterday while reading other opinion pieces in the New York Times. The question was largely in context of nonfiction writers taking on a topic outside of their personal experience: the writer of a war novel who never experienced battle or a Caucasian woman writing on predominately African American culture. It was assumed in the article that the writers performed extensive research in order to write about each new topic, taking pains to write as truthfully and honestly as they could. But the question remains. Do these writers own their stories and if in doing so, do they take ownership away from those they interviewed and studied, those who had lived the words on the page?

These questions, as a blogger, stay with me. I am now the very proud owner of the domain name www.twelvetoedtraveler.com. This is my public outlet for my personal story. Here in this magical Internet world, I share my thoughts and my experiences with anyone willing to indulge me for 20-600 words. I wonder about my own legitimacy to share my stories and to includes others who may not have asked to be written about or illustrated in detail. I worry about the way my motivation may be portrayed: truthful expression or creative license for exploitation?

Austin was incredible; the city is filled with sun, incredible food and wonderful company. One evening Billy and I were seated at the patio outside Uchi (which would go on to be the best sushi experience of my entire life) waiting for our table when a waitress came to bring us drinks. The three of us began chatting and the waitress told us she was planning a solo trip to Europe–one way ticket to Copenhagen–and we immediately exchanged contact information while I rattled off a number of places I knew she would love. I remember feeling incredibly excited for her, embracing another continent to explore the world with some hard-earned cash. I was confident that it was going to be one of her big life changing experience. And then I realized,

she was me.

One month from today, I will be in Geneva, Switzerland starting my own solo tour of beautiful, historic countries I’ve only seen or read about in travel books and Facebooks. I have my countries in order: Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Turkey. I have begun to (roughly) chart my expedition across these foreign lands: the places my parents honeymooned and my friends have beached and bathed. I have one month and I am totally overwhelmed.

“Who owns the story, the person who lives it or the person who write it?”

But I think about my alternative. The alternative being not going. The alternative being someone else writing my story.

My motivation for traveling and for writing is self discovery. It is meant to be neither self-indulgent nor abstract. I write because there are places I’ve been and people I’ve met who deserve to be recognized; these people and experiences have changed me. I write because I don’t want to choose between living my story or writing someone else’s. I want both.

—-

P.S. I want to give a special shout out to those people from Northampton, my old job, and others who have recently begun following my blog. Thank you for your support as I start out of these very exciting and scary chapter of my life. I’ll be bringing each of you with me as I roll my suitcase and write my words.

L is for the way…

April 15, 2014Posted in ThoughtsTagged Love, Love Illuminated, Spring, Spring peepersLeave a comment

The world is in love.

At dusk, soft voices blend in marshland harmony and their chorus is lifted from the soggy earth up over the hills growing in number and strength. Each male voice calls out in desperation, dreaming of the perfect mate with whom to spend the warm days and cool nights. She is all he thinks of, all he lives for, and the reason for his song.

…the mid-March crescendo of nighttime whistles from amorous males is for many a sign that winter is over.

The spring peepers have awoken.

Two friends, one from college & one from high school, are marrying their high school sweethearts in May. As a loyal friend and bridesmaid, I will jump into the car on Friday, drive to New Jersey to pick up another bridesmaid and road trip to Pennsylvania to celebrate with this bride-to-be. This will be my second bridal shower in just a month and I couldn’t be happier for these friends and their fiances about to embark on yet another chapter of their happily ever after. The world is in love.

Daniel Jones is the editor of a New York Times column and author of a new book, Love Illuminated: Exploring Life’s Most Mystifying Subject (with the Help of 50,000 Strangers). Jones has received tens of thousands of stories on the topic of love and has attempted to distill them in a lighthearted and realistic manner, delving into the modern age of dating, online relationships, divorces and second chances.

“After all, love is for the sucker in us, not the skeptic. Love appeals to our gullible side, the part of us that wants to believe. pg 103” And as each of these engaged couples, longtime partners and blossoming lovers take another shaky step into a unknown future, my heart goes out to them. These are brave souls. There is a great risk in putting trust in another person, giving up control and falling (or leaning) in love. In the modern age of dating, I am personally aware of the mixed signals and awkward silences. Do I like you? Do you like me? Am I too needy or overly aloof? It isn’t easy and the soul mates of the previous century seem to be a thing of the past. But people continue to find love every day and I am grateful to those people willing to take a risk–pushing their chips into the center and going all in.

I know what many of you are thinking. Who is this blogger and what has she done to the jaded, hopelessly unromantic Katelyn Tsukada? Do not fret. I have not jumped over into a world of star-crossed blissful lovers or ate one too many stale candy hearts left over from February 14th. There will be no “Save the Date” at your door or elopement announcement from my parents in your Inbox (or Span folder). This love is bigger than me. It’s the sun in the morning when I wake up and the 70 degree temperatures during the day. It’s my newfound attempt to regain a healthy food diet and regular gym schedule. And maybe it’s my birthday in ten days and the nervous excitement in anticipation of a new age and new year.

And maybe…maybe spring brings out that part in each of us that so desperately wants to believe in something bigger than ourselves.

Happy Spring.

Living with your questions

March 12, 2014March 12, 2014Posted in ThoughtsTagged freezing rain, March, Rilke, sunny afternoon, uncharted territory3 Comments

March has arrived. The fickle weather pendulum lingers briefly on sunny afternoon before swinging wildly back to January cold and freezing rain. Sometimes spring feels so far away…

One of my wonderful housemates is leaving, forcing the remaining two residents on Henry St. to fill empty shoes with another pair of feet. More than one of my close friends and family members are finding new jobs, quitting old ones and moving forward into uncharted territory. My schedule is filling up with rehearsal times, wedding receptions and other people’s obligations. And in-between all the planning, I’m forming new relationships while trying to balance life’s most basic questions.

Julie, the housemate who will not be leaving come April 1st, has been privy to much of the change in my life while balancing a plethora of her own challenges and questions. Last week, she gave me incredible solace by quoting a beautiful line from a favorite quote before charging upstairs and rewriting these powerful words from one of Germany’s greatest 20th century poets:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

I hope this helps you, dear reader, during this fascinating and tumultuous time of pre-spring blues. And sleep well knowing that you will fare better than poor Julius Caesar in three days time. Beware the Ides of March. For everything else, there’s cookie butter.

Sweet things

February 1, 2014Posted in College Graduate Problems, Thoughts, Traveled PlacesTagged Inside Llewyn Davis, mid-20's, Nebraska, Slutty Brownies, Sweet things2 Comments

My life is feeling jumbled recently. I moved back into a cubical after a brief stint sharing an office with two fabulous windows and natural light. Our little house on Henry St. had adopted a fuzzy mouse guest that likes to nibble through plastic lids, butternut squash, sacks of flour and sweet potatoes. The weather swings wildly back and forth between frigid wintery chill and balmy spring day. I’ve begun online dating. I’m flying to Washington DC in a week.

2014 is already proving to be a wonderful and terrifying year. So here is a short list of sweet things in my life:

1. Birthday Cards- I sent off a couple birthday cards in the mail this week. I’m bad, very bad, at remembering friends’ birthdays. It’s not for lack of love but more the sporadic nature with which I check my calendar and organize my numerical thoughts. The sending of birthday cards–stamping well wishes and trusting the US Post–feels warm and fuzzy knowing someone far away will physically touch the same envelope and reach the same words that you wrote days earlier. To all my friends whose birthdays I have forgotten, do not despair. There’s always next year.

2. Brownies- Not just any brownies but Slutty Brownies. I made these beauties for a co-worker’s birthday and they are most intense, dense and luxurious brownies I’ve ever made. It takes all the decision-making (Cookie? Oreo? Brownie?) difficulties out of your dessert treat. Not for the dieter or faint of heart.

3. Sue and Donna-On Mondays and Wednesdays I wake up at 6:10am, stumble out of bed and navigate my way to the gym as my eyelids slowly unglue themselves from sleep. Sue teaches step/rep exercise classes on these mornings and I love her for all her high energy music and dedication to step aerobics. Donna, a spright 50 year old Asian woman, has more energy than a classroom of kindergardeners and personally recruited me for these deathly early morning workouts. But they are quickly becoming part of my personal routine and considering how much butter is in a slutty brownie, it’s probably for the best.

4. Movies- I don’t see movies much, if at all. And yet by tomorrow morning, I will have seen three within a week’s span. And good films at that. The bare and hauntingly beautiful music in Inside Llewyn Davis and the questions of meaning and longevity in Nebraska have stayed with me long after the lights of the movie house faded back into reality. Food for thought. I can only hope Dallas Buyers Club dusts me with an equally powerful residue that I’ll carry out into my daily comings and goings.

5. Untraveled Places– For obvious reasons. Because they’re waiting for you.

Short, sweet and NOW

January 3, 2014Posted in ThoughtsTagged 2014, Fahrenheit 451, New Year, New Years Resolution, Ray Bradbury2 Comments

Imagine my life as a house. And imagine Ray Bradbury walked into that house unannounced and proclaimed,

“2014 is going to be different. You might not be happy all the time or find all the answers but this year is going to make you think about what is really valuable in life. You will identify and go after those things.”

Maybe Ray said those things and maybe he didn’t. But I’m saying it to you right now.

I’m currently reading Fahrenheit 451 and, let me say, it is the kind of book that makes one shift uncomfortably in bed before falling asleep. Similar to George Orwell’s 1984, this small book packs a realistic punch from a distant unimaginable future. I carry this futuristic dystopian society around with me–to the grocery store, at work, in the gym. How is our current reality similar to a world that hates philosophy and new ideas, a world that burns books? What would I do in such a society? Who would I be?

Which brings me to my very real and very vague 2014 New Year’s Resolution:

Life is short. Life is sweet. Life is NOW.

We are not always given the things we believe we need or deserve. The boss will not award us the promotion or extra week of vacation just because we sit passively waiting for our just desserts. I’ve yet to find my one “true love” while sitting on a park bench watching strangers pass me by. Living is not a passive verb and we are not a passive species. In 2014, I will find things that make my life worth (actively) living. And I will go after those things…whether I’m ready for them or not.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

Planned walk down memory lane

December 28, 2013Posted in ThoughtsTagged 2013, 2014, A Gradual Awakening, Change, Discovery, Mindfulness, New Year, Resolve3 Comments

In anticipation of the new year, I’ve purchased tiny pink cans of champagne, a blank Moleskin planner and a new purple ballpoint pen. With only two days left to overindulge in Christmas cookies and make plans for an overly anticipated NYE, I’ve set my mind ahead to 2014. Will my gung ho “fresh out the gate” enthusiasm for the next twelve months dissolve under the pressure of routine, procrastination and reliance on destiny? Only time will tell.

Glancing back at my 2013 planner, I witnessed small snapshots of my past year. I remembered meeting friends for the first time, auditioning for plays and dance groups, accepting a job, noting birthdays I remembered (or forgot), and a brief 3-month obsession with hot yoga. The experiences, mistakes, scheduled appointments– all filed away in the pages of months gone by.

How much do we change year to year, moment to moment? Years can pass us by without any noticeable change while a single event may alter the way we view our role in the world forever. My journal entry dated December 26th, 2013 read remarkably like my entry dated exactly one year earlier in 2012. I had the same feelings of nostalgia surrounding Christmas festivities as an adult, insecurity about my future, questions about the definition of home and the absence of romance in my life. Have I changed? How can I tell? Is change tangible, pencil marks on the wall for each inch and every year taller, or a continuous wave ebbing and flowing with the cyclical tide?

If I was to pick a New Year’s Resolution, it would have something to do with mindfulness. Mindnessful, “a state of active, open attention on the present (Psychology Today)” is linked to Buddhism and the practice of meditation. In his book A Gradual Awakening, Stephen Levine compares our thoughts to the cars of a train and encourages the reader to step away from the continuous flow of images and experiences, letting them pass by and disappear around the bend. I’m sick of being overbooked and underwhelmed. I will strength my resolve to live fully within these precious moments with a greater awareness of time and space. We have, after all, only ourselves to suffer with, to love with and to cherish.

Every year is given to us as a gift and it is up to each of us how we use the mystery beneath the wrapping paper.

Race toward home

December 10, 2013Posted in ThoughtsTagged Asian, multi-cultural, Pico Iyer, race, Race Card Project2 Comments

Pico Iyer, a writer and world traveler, gives an incredibly powerful 14 minutes TED talk titled “Where is home?” He begins with this simple question and delves quickly into a larger discussion on the global community and individual sense of belonging. If you skip the rest of my blog post, at least watch this:

Iyer’s poignant observation regarding movement and stillness rang true in my life as a traveler, a millennial, and a dancer. But his discussion on home also triggered another part of myself. That as a multiracial child in the 21st century.

Which brings me to the Race Card Project (racecardproject.com), a fascinating platform for people to speak about race. Michele Norris with National Public Radio started this project by inviting people to share any thought or experience regarding race. In six words. Some of the stories have been shared on the radio and online. I decided to create my own. What would your race card say?

“They only see the Asian half.” -My race card

My mother is of Irish and Italian heritage; my father of Japanese descent. Both of my parents were born in the United States as were their parents before them. Both consider themselves to be American as documented by their passports, drivers licenses and birth certificates. My mother and father speak English has their first and only language. And the American child they created and raised together? Well she constantly gets asked where she is “really” from because New York State is never the correct answer.

I learned to identify myself as Asian-American because that is how others categorized me. My classmates assumed Asian was the reason I got good grades. Asian was the reason I liked seafood and tanned like an islander. And Asian was the reason my grandmother was lived in a Colorado internment camp directly following the attack on Pearl Harbor. My history. Asian history. The rich Irish-Italian culture of my mother’s family never stood a chance.

A Life Guide to Packing Light

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