JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

I’ve felt like stained glass in the past week. Fragile. Broken. In pieces.

How long will there be rape and murder? How long will we have oppression, suffering and poverty? How long will the world be filled with pain? Yes, I’m speaking about what I’m seeing on the tv screen from Katrina and reading in blogs [here, here and here for example], but even as I’ve read blog posts on other topics in the past week [ for example, here here and here] my heart has ached. There’s rottenness in a country where dead people rot, propped in lawn chairs, and where many watch their teeth and bodies rot because they can’t afford medical care. There’s violation in a world where women are routinely violated. There’s grievance in a world where we grieve the loved ones we have lost, robbed of life by murderers and disasters, with names such as cancer and Katrina.

Sorrow has shaken me. I came into the end of August exhausted after a fun but intense summer. While we spent the past weekend relaxing with friends, I also spent it in tears, tired in every way. I grieve for the suffering I see. I grieve for the suffering I read. Yet I’ve been hesitant to write this. Who am I, among the wealthiest in the world, to claim I am in pain?

Through blogs and emails I’ve learned many people are aching. Some from the results of Katrina. Some simply from observing the havoc of a hurricane. But others experience storms inside them, in their families, in their communities.

I’ve had my own storms this summer. Private sorrows I can’t share here. And the sadness of friends whose burdens I try to carry as I can. One day last week I received two emails, each describing a brain tumor that had been diagnosed this summer.

In the past week I’ve read stories of a musician who cracked. And this brokenness has helped me with my own broken pieces.

Even though I am not a disaster survivor, like Evelyn Rodriguez, I felt I could understand her post that described her heart breaking open and her year of losses.

So, in the grand scheme of things, the tsunami wasn’t that hard on me, myself.

However it was the first time my heart reached out to so many others. I literally felt the collective pain and suffering throughout the Indian Ocean. And that bowled me over.

Dave Pollard asked How then, I would like to know, do you maintain your resilience? The answers in his comments are helpful. I know that getting rest and sleep and intentionally taking a slower pace this week have helped me recharge physically. And from the physical refreshment, the emotional and spiritual have followed.

I’ve tried to wake early and go for long walks soon after sunrise, long walks, where I cry and yell at the sky. The pain has broken open my heart in new ways. I’m beginning to be able to pray again. Even if I can only ask How long?

As I’ve cried and talked, I’ve realized. Taking time to walk among the trees as the sun rises gives me energy. Confessing my emotions can be powerful.

When I hurt, I am most human. People are imperfect and we will always have pain, whether from the environment, or each other. The hurt I’ve felt in life allows me in little ways to experience other’s hurt, to have an open heart, to want to try to do what I can to help.

How long? I think I will always be hungry. I hope I will always ache. I hope, in some sense, I’m never happy in this crazy life. I hope I’m always hurting and willing to help those who hurt. Sometimes out of overload or overwhelmed, I turn off my heart. But I hope can always weep with those who weep.

I see more how God is not like people. Once I was furious at God for allowing suffering. But now I see many of the messes in life are ones we have made as people, people imperfect and selfish, like me. The more I see of the messes inside me and others, the more I want to believe in God.

People are fragile like glass. Yet we are also sharp enough to cut each other. I’ve broken. But I’ve also cut. I’ve failed in loving others. I feel I’ve failed too as a blogger.

I’ve felt too fragile to write here. Sometimes blogs don’t seem a safe place to share what’s happening inside. I felt guilty for taking a break but at the same time, I knew I needed it. Blogging comes with responsibilities. I had to wait to be strong enough both to put out what was inside me and to take whatever I receive as a response. Still I’m not sure I’ve written this piece well, but I want to share what I’ve been thinking, to be true to who I am and true to what I post here.

I even thought about taking a break from reading blogs. But then when I read David Weinberger’s topical application of coffee (had to smile at that one) or badgerbag’s posts from volunteering in the Astrodome, my spirit is cheered. My sorrow lessens. And I know I need to be here.

Kathy Sierra says that if you brain had a bumper sticker it would say I heart conversations. I heart conversations is also the bumper sticker on my heart. And I heart community.

For we are all fragile. Certainly Katrina shows us how quickly we can lose life. We are all like glass. And when we can come together as the broken pieces we are, together we can make something beautiful and glorious in its translucence.

On Monday, Ted and I rented bicycles for the entire family, including a trailer for Elisabeth, and went around on trails for about an hour. Our two older daughters have their own bikes with training wheels. However, this was the first time I was on a bicycle in close to ten years. I used to ride to work every day, when Ted and I were first married. It was a short commute, a couple miles on local roads to the university, but effective and efficient since we had only one car. Then we moved to California and I wasn’t as excited to ride my bike alongside the speeding traffic on Stevens Creek Boulevard. Cautious, during our infertility treatments, I stopped biking. Through years of pregnancies, my bike got out of shape and I did too.

I’ve never been passionate about biking – until Monday. Perhaps it was because I didn’t have a bike when I was a kid. I not only missed out on riding around during my childhood but also a bike – and my lack of skills – became a symbol to me of our family’s deficiencies, along with the divorce. I finally learned how to ride a bike when I was 11, pedaling the one my stepmother had used as a kid. I think I still have a photograph of me in my fifth-grade orange jacket posed proudly on her wide blue bicycle.

Ten years later, after college graduation, I bought my own bicycle. It’s the same one I still have now, a dark green hybrid, lying against the garage wall, in need of a tune-up. Perhaps part of the reason I let it get into disrepair is that I preferred running to biking. I’d rather feel the road beneath my feet. I like the simplicity and intensity of running. No equipment required.

But on Monday to my surprise, I found I liked biking as a family. At first I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to bike. I tried to test ride a bicycle and it was the strangest feeling. I couldn’t balance. I couldn’t move the pedals. It didn’t feel at all like riding a bicycle. The idiom was inaccurate! I didn’t think I could remember how to ride a bicycle. Embarrassing, especially since two of my daughters were already pedaling away on their selected bikes, wondering what was wrong with Mommy.

After a few tries – and Ted readjusting the gears which had been cranked high – I discovered I could bike. It did come back! More than that, I discovered I enjoyed the social aspect of biking. Running is my favorite sport and one I’ve usually pursued on my own, getting up early in the morning for some solitary time on the road before the day begins. Since college, I’ve rarely run with anyone.

I began biking at age 21, in order to commute to work. I don’t know why but I don’t remember Ted and I taking any fun trips together on our cycles in our younger years. I think I liked biking to work. I enjoyed the exercise. But I don’t think I often rode with others, except during one graduation trip. Perhaps due to my own insecurities about my skills. Athletics has not come easily to me.

Now, with our family, I think I can bike at least as well as our young children. And at the moment I don’t need to go any faster than them anyway. Someone’s got to bring up the rear and keep an eye on the kids!

bike trailers are a great place to nap!

So, I’m looking forward to enjoying years of biking as a family! The kids liked it too!

And I’m realizing that many things can be like riding a bicycle…if you haven’t done it in a while, once you overcome a little awkwardness, you can get back into it again…almost as if you never left…

Catching up on blogging …here’s a post that was drafted last month…

Shelley Powers wrote a thoughtful post about Foo Camp and as I went for a walk Sunday morning of that weekend on the recreational trail that runs behind O’Reilly and through parts of Sebastopol, I thought of Shelley and imagined which pictures she might take. Her photos and photo essays amaze me – I had to show my daughters her monarch ones since they adore butterflies – and so this is my little tribute to Burningbird: go look here and here for more inspiration. Thanks, Shelley!

Sea-Tac airport glass art

an apple in the O’Reilly orchard

weathered walnut shell

holes (burrows?) in the ground

magnolia blossom along the trail

ubiquitous pink lilies blooming in bunches

goodbye to Golden Gate

From Ethan Zuckerman, David Weinberger and Rebecca MacKinnon, I learned about Blog Day 2005.

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.

With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. In this way, all Blog web surfers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

I confess that my first reaction to BlogDay was to ignore it: I feel I already have too many things on my to-do list. I have more blogs to read and topics to write than I can post.

But then I began exploring the Bridge Blog Index wiki and I had a lot of fun looking through the lists of blogs organized by continent and nation.

Here are five blogs I discovered in the Bridge Blog Index wiki and put into my aggregator:

Nicaragua Living

South Pole (yes, I was surprised to see many blogs from Antarctica!)

Hacktivate (Malawi)

Voice in the Desert

My Africa: Police Business

And I thought I would add to this post three more blogs from women who spoke at Blogher:

Sepia Mutiny

Noriko Takiguchi’s blog

Em Duas Lingas

Go take a look at these blogs…or this wiki…and make a list of your own! It’s fun!

Nancy White has posted links to the Katrina Help Wiki and other blogs including Deadly Katrina

Susan Mernit pointed to New Orleans Met blogs, flickr tag: katrina and first hand accounts as well as Doc Searls and Jeff Jarvis’ question.

This piece by Doc Searls published earlier this morning is also powerful.

Robert Scoble has a good collection of links including Staci Kramer’s OPML blog and one on Post-Hurricane Charity

Glenn Reynolds post [via Robert] reminds me to buy more batteries for the radio in our emergency supplies.

The topic of discussion between Ted and I tonight was Katrina, how people are surviving and responding, and how prepared we are for a disaster

I’ve also appreciated what Grace expressed and .badgerbag’s thoughts on emergency supplies.

Update: college friend and Congressional representative Bobby Jindal has also posted helpful information for Louisiana residents on his site.