Puzzling mental space...

[pasithea]

So.. Stacey and I went to see the Appleseed movie today. Not sure why I wanted to see it. When I was in college I read the comic and I scowered the face of the Earth looking for the video when it came to the US in like 1992. Back then anime and manga were really hard to come by. Also, not having seen comics with that level of detail prior to those. So it was a strangely nostalgic thing.

Anyhow, the movie was at the Saratoga AMC (which is kinda east side of San Jose, almost to Los Gatos)

Pulling into the plaza I remarked, "Geez. This has gotta be the whitest part of town." I dunno. Something about the pinkish stucco strip-mall with a Baskin Robbins next to the theatre and so many other generic mainstream america type stores.

I liked the movie though I think probably more for nostalgia reasons than content. Also, it was nice to just spend some time cuddling with Stacey. We worked in the garden in the morning then went to the movie 'n'. I dunno. Was just nice. Maybe I'm just kinda mushy sometimes.

After the movie, we went to Midori (cheap sushi) and had what would have been a romantic dinner had it not been for this guy. He just blathered incessantly the whole time at his captives friends. How heterosexual women can stay awake through that kind of dulldrom is beyond me. I'd have rammed a chopstick up his nose and swished it around until I found the pea that made his lips move. Blah.

After dinner we went to Han Kooks (Korean Grocery Market) and that's when it really hit me... I dunno when it happened, or maybe it was always there but.. I'm really more comfortable and at home around first generation immigrants than I am around white america. Safeway, K-Mart, WalMart, etc seem foriegn and alien to me. They really always have. Fat white people gruntingly shoving their carts past one another. It's a totally different atomosphere at the places we shop now. There's certain scents in korean groceries and indian groceries that at one timed seemed alien to me but now they seem familiar and comfortable and more inviting than 'mainstream' america. Music, scents, sounds, strange dried fish and vegetables, brightly coloured packages with labels it takes me a long time to read, at some point, something about the total alieness of these things become completely familiar and normal to me and I bonded to it in a way I never did with 'mainstream' society.

It also makes me hungry to study more and learn more languages and read more on cultural histories.

Actually, I secretely dream that I'm but a child of the future. I look forward to the reality of worlds like the one described in Bladerunner where all races are mixed into one big mess with people needing to know a multitude of languages and cultural references to communicate with most people they meet on the street. I'm woefully unprepared for this world, but I still look forward to it. I grew up in a world where, while segregation had legally ended, it was still very much enforced, and I starved for different ways of life, where not everyone was the same cookie-cutter carbon-copy, and I've never looked back on this world for a moment with anything other than disdain. Give me kimchee and curry any day of the week over meatloaf and green bean casserole.