Seven Star Cavern Wishing Well - Old Chinatown Central Plaza

This past weekend life carried me to Los Angeles’ Old Chinatown Central Plaza. While there on an errand, I threw a coin into its Seven Star Cavern Wishing Well. By “well” I don’t mean your standard hole in the ground encircled by bricks, but you probably figured that out with the phrase “Seven Star Cavern”. This is more of a replica of the Seven Star Caves of China, painted green, dotted with Buddha statues and little metal “wells” complete with signage. These signs call out to the things we often wish for – “Love” (naturally all the way at the top, no incognito throwing there), “Prosperity”, “Peace”, “Wealth”, “Good Luck”, and even one for “Vacation”.

There is also one for “Happiness”.

Happiness - Seven Star Cavern Wishing Well

This one isn’t in the picture I took above; it’s near the bottom area under the broken sign for “Wealth” (symbolic of the bad economy?). I aimed my coin for “Happiness” – since it seemed a little closer at hand and I was just talking to someone about the meaning of happiness just the other day. It might not be readily apparent, but “Happiness” has two little “wells” – one very apparent underneath the sign and a smaller one next to it on the right. When I threw a penny in, it ricocheted off either the larger well or the “Happiness” sign and into the smaller one.

My immediate thought, “What does that mean?” Followed by being kind of amazed – I hadn’t even noticed that smaller container and what were the odds of my coin landing in there?

Then the obvious questions: Did it mean happiness? Did it mean almost happiness? The events of the weekend made me think that it’s both these things.

Immediately after this, I purchased a Jasmine milk tea with mini boba and had returned by the fountain to drink it and eat my lunch. I hadn’t been entirely careful when puncturing a hole into the plastic sealed cup and, with the drink perched on the grates of a bench, it fell to the ground. With a plastic cup and a plastic sealed lid, I immediately grabbed it – hoping it was just a minor spill. However, the cup had split open on the side and everything else with it. In my immediacy to grab the cup, my phone also fell into the mess as well. My drink gone, my phone sticky but intact, I sat and ate my container of chicken chow mein under the red paper lanterns, contemplating if the puddle of Jasmine milk tea and mini boba was the picture of almost happiness.

If it was, it wasn’t pretty…

But this seemed like too much of a philosophical question to tackle, especially over spilled milk tea. I roamed back to the same tea shop for another purchase – wondering if I should brace myself for an embarrassing telling of my klutziness if the salesclerk should remember me.  Although I think I noticed a slight glimmer of curious recognition in his eyes, I think I was rescued by the place’s popularity and the ordinariness that comes with looking like just another Asian-American girl in Chinatown.

I walked the few blocks of Chinatown enjoying an intact drink and taking photos, wandering through nearby Olvera Street where I picked up a mini decorative guitar – something I had always meant to buy for its iconic nature as an Olvera Street sales item, for the fact that I play guitar, and…okay, they’re just cute.

Aztec Dancer at Olvera Street

As I left the shops and restaurants of Olvera Street, I began to hear the sound of drumming at El Pueblo de Los Angeles Plaza. I heard a women nearby tell her friend that it was Aztec dancers, so naturally I scurried forward for a good view. Seated cross-legged on cement, I was in front of the crowd, camera in hand – the show ahead of me.

Bright feathers. Elegantly long headdresses. Shiny colorful outfits.
Drums. Drums. Drums.
Dance. Dance. Dance.

Meanwhile, the sun peeked in and out of light gray clouds. Even under this gray, the day was bright, but when the sun shone through – there was a kind of magic that blended with the dancing. I wasn’t knowledgeable about the history of Aztecs beyond the gentle impression of facts from TV and California and World history schoolbooks. I couldn’t tell you about the costumes, the dances, or the drums. I couldn’t name names or much less pronounce them. But dancing and drums and the reflection of a people’s history carry with it a relationship to the sky and the sun and the earth. It’s a special something that often gets lost underneath our existence in sound-controlled environments, office cubicle spaces, and clock-constrained schedules. At least, that’s how it felt in those moments watching the sky shift with the movement of people and seeing the sun act as the world’s largest spotlight, casting shadows of the dancers on the cement in front of me.

I left the sound of drumming and the motions of dance to go to where I originally intended – the Chinese American Museum. Though I wanted to see their current exhibition on Chinese American architects, I had never been there before and decided to wander it all. It’s not a large museum, but the richness of a museum – like a good book – is never about its size. It’s about how you fill that space. The Chinese American Museum takes you back in time and pushes you forward through the up’s and down’s of a people who helped build this country even if, at times, this country kept barriers in front of them.

Perhaps the journey of Chinese-Americans touches too close to home for me – despite being the daughter of more recent Vietnamese immigrants, I am Asian-American of (at least some) Chinese ancestry. I’m not connected to those roots closely – I don’t speak the language and my knowledge of Chinese culture is intermingled with Vietnamese practices – but it’s part of who I am and being no stranger to the prejudices of being a minority in America, I can feel my thin thread connected to a heavier spool of experiences and actions and heartache that yearned for something better.

But the Chinese-American Museum timeline lets you choose how long you want to linger across time, urging you to move forward to the successes that stem from them, to those that persevere – the war heroes who fought in spite of it all, the acknowledgments that arrived with positions in public office, the (few) faces of celebrity fame. My journey there closed with their current exhibition of Chinese-Americans who shaped the Los Angeles landscape and architecture.

I think we often forget that there are faces behind buildings and a part of me feels that maybe there’s beauty in that amnesia. But in this instance, at this museum having ran through the timeline of where Chinese-Americans had to begin, I was glad to learn the names and faces tied to the complexities of structures, glad to see them as places that rise above a past that could easily hold us all back.

New View of Los Angeles - Midway Point at the Chinatown Firecracker 10K

The day landed me in unexpected places, even in the one place I had intended to go. The next day would echo the same as I ran the Chinatown Firecracker 10K. I had signed up for the race twice before and had to bow out due to one reason or another. This third time signing up, I was determined to give it a full go – and I did…and it was wonderful. But it was more than starting and crossing a long awaited finish line. I’ve lived in Los Angeles all my life and though I had to run (okay – walk…) some hills to get there, it was nice to see views I had never seen, to run around Dodger Stadium where I had only gone to baseball games, to gather with thousands of people I might never know but who experienced the same spaces with me.

Almost happiness IS happiness, but it’s the kind that you get without looking. It’s the happiness that you achieve after a certain string of events, some by chance – like a coin ricocheting off a sign and into an unseen wishing well – and others by attempting a goal but achieving far more than that.  It’s happiness in unexpected and unseen places.

In a conversation with my friend before all this – that gave me part cause to throw a coin toward happiness – I described that “being happy is a limited effect and all we’re really seeking are the things that will cause it.” While I still believe this is true, I also think that those two wells in front of “Happiness” tell me something: that there is happiness that you can seek, but all around you is the possibility that happiness can also find you in the process.

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I bought these earrings myself.  $25.  Church silent auction.  They’re butterflies – something anyone who keeps up-to-date with on this blog realizes is a favorite symbol of mine.

But despite the lack of cost (and let’s face it, almost lack of diamond), there’s something about being able to tell myself that I bought my first diamond earrings all by myself.  There’s something in that message that I’ve always found empowering.

I find many jewels beautiful, but the diamond has this reputation that’s hard to shake as being a gemstone of worth in society.  My earrings are certainly not like the baubles on the fingers of celebrities that roam this town.  And that’s fine.  I grasp not at the diamond as this visual object since obviously most people would likely not see them in my earrings without squinting (maybe), but rather how much this fraction of something could hold more worth than even the largest diamond.

Don’t get me wrong.  If someone wanted to give me the Cullinan diamond I wouldn’t necessarily say no, but my desire for that would be monetary.  I don’t love these earrings because they’re $25.  I love them because they remind me that no matter where I am in life and the future, achievements don’t have to be grand; they don’t even have to glimmer like diamonds in the sun to be worth more than even the largest diamond in the world.

Ultimately you define for your own self what it means to be successful and happy.  If it’s about getting the largest diamond in the world (or heck – the universe!), by all means go ahead, but remember the steps that took you there and enjoy every minute of the journey as if they were tiny diamonds you bought all by yourself.

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Yesterday I was heading home late from work and waiting for the train.  I was listening to my music – a little Mana to haunt me since  I wasn’t able to see them when they rolled into the town the last few days.

I reluctantly paused my music when a man next to me started making small talk – let’s just call him GED teacher…if that’s what he really is.

He worked for a federal GED program teaching high school drop-outs, so we talked about education and I asked if he had heard about the LAUSD/10% homework news.  We talked about how students really need to do work outside of class and make education a priority.  He mentioned that he had his doctorate in education and how he told this story to his students to hopefully motivate them because he actually came to this country as an illegal immigrant.  He mentioned that he and his wife – they had since divorced – had made education a priority over kids so that they could both work on their education.

I suppose he didn’t think that I would notice that sometime in our conversation, he tried to switch his gold band wedding ring from his left hand to his right hand’s pinky – even though he did this in front of my face as we were talking.

It was one of those conversation that had to continue on since we were on the same train, else I would’ve been rude.  So we continued talking about education and I just asked him about the different types of students he had.  I left the train and wished him luck with his students.

I turned my iPod back on with Mana continuing to play as if I had never left the comfort of my musical world….

…except GED teacher had gotten off the train to ask me for my number.

Me: I’m sorry.  I don’t give my number out.

GED Teacher: (flustered) I’m actually a happily married man…

As he says this, he tries to do another wedding ring switch or show me his wedding ring…

GED Teacher: …and am just looking for contacts of people in education…

Me: Oh, I don’t work in education.

And I left – I left feeling really sad for the world and sad for singular stories.  There was the singular story of the woman not in the conversation, the one he’s “happily” married to and probably doesn’t know that he does this wedding band switch-a-roo.  The story of a man who may or may not even be a GED teacher, who feels that not only can he say he is divorced, but also blatantly try to both create this lie and untangle himself from the lie in front of my face.  At no time did I give any impression that I might be interested in this man, let alone for him to get himself into a crazy lie in a 10-15 minute conversation where I kept my arms crossed and myself distant.

I don’t fault people for taking chances.  I don’t think people take enough chances in this world.  But to do so at the expense of your own integrity, at the expense of a marriage – a lifelong commitment -  that you can claim is happy after you try and pretend it doesn’t exist?  That just makes me sad.

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Cameras flash at Madame Tussauds – faux celebrities are almost the real thing, right?

Pass by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, compare your footprints with them – celebrities who walked on the air of fame past and present.  How do your hands compare against theirs?  How do your feet?  If they match, is your joy because you are almost like them or that you see that they are more like us – who exist on the fringe of red carpets and lit ceremony?

Walk on the Walk of Fame pavement – remember the crowd that gathered in droves to see Michael Jackson’s star, laying to rest a fountain of flowers and gifts, mementos and memory.  See it today: one woman, feet perched on the star, one camera to capture a memory far from the moment you remember before.

How did time move forward so quickly?

A car is stopped at the light between Hollywood Boulevard and Orange, a large dark SUV.  Two blondes sit in the front, an unknown number of passengers in the back.  The blonde on the passenger side has a row of dark tattoo lettering bright across her arm; she talks to a group on the street as if she knows them.

Maybe she does?  Maybe they do.

She asks about something on one of their shirts, approving of the logo, the expression, the phrasing…  Whatever it is, does it matter? Sometimes approval is all you need in this town.

Earlier, on the same street,  a stretch limo drove by.  Think bigger.  Hummer H2 with an open back, as if it were taking its passengers on safari – into the wilds of Hollywood people-watching armed with bottle service and disco lights.

A young woman walks down Orange dressed in a purple ball gown complete with hooped skirt.  Remember Donna in 90210, the prom episode?  Except not that awkward.  Her entourage follows her tiara-crowned figure in jeans and t-shirts.  Her mother is among her people.  Is she wondering “where did my little girl go?”  or “can it be tomorrow yet?”

And I sit in the corner coffee shop, not studying.

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“I was sitting out in a lawn chair – no shirt, no shoes…that’s probably too much information, but I don’t wear this robe seven days a week!  It was a wonderful summer day.  I was reading through a couple of different books in preparation for my sermon this morning, but while I was sitting there – this beautiful butterfly started flying all around me. [...] It was softly dancing in the air [...] it was lovely.  At first it landed near my feet, and then it flew off again.  And then it landed on the arm of my chair, and then it flew off yet again.  And that’s when it happened, I’m sitting in the chair, and this one beautiful, elegant butterfly [...] it landed right on my chest, right over the place of my heart.”

Sunday’s reading was on the Prodigal Son and Rev. Colglazier’s sermon focused on the art of forgiveness.  In order to forgive, we have to love.  What does this have to do with a butterfly landing on the heart?  Essentially that God is like a butterfly, looking for a place to land in our hearts, and that we just have to let God in.

There’s always something about butterflies that have made their way into a definition in my life.  I love butterflies because they transform from something else, they’re beautiful for a limited-time only, and they come-and-go as reminders that life can happen in glorious moments.  There’s something about them that evokes a bit of magic.

Perhaps the magic of the story continued on that day because the other great symbol of my life – the heart – made an appearance.  This was after a great Bach Festival rehearsal and I was walking home.  I looked down on the path and saw a perfectly heart-shaped leaf.  I looked around and saw that the plant it came from didn’t really have heart-shaped leaves.

I know the association of the girl and the love of hearts and butterflies meets a million cliches, but the heart is just this beautiful symbol to me because it represents love, which I firmly believe is something that can change the world.

So in looking back on that day of a butterfly landing and a heart-shaped leaf, I was trying to piece together what it all might mean as a whole.  I’ve decided that just as important as it is to let God and love into your heart, it’s just as equally important to trust in God in every step because you never know when love will find you like an unexpected heart on a well-worn path.

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