20/20

A few weeks ago, I was rummaging through old photographs when I found one of myself. It was taken in a hotel lobby, the anteroom to a thumping fiasco of Asian American college students gyrating to hip hop music. "Baby, when we're grinding, I get so excited..." Stating the obvious will never go out of style.

I was 21, wearing a little black dress my boyfriend at the time had bought me and standing tall in chunky, black heels. The boyfriend had taken this picture of me next to my future roommate. I was a few pounds slimmer then and I remembered that I still have the dress. Would it still fit? And more importantly, could I, philosophically, still wear it out in public?

I exhumed it from my closet and pulled it over my body a dozen years later. It fit tiny a bit differently but mostly it was the same snug polyester costume a young man in love had bought for a girl he thought was "gorgeous". His word, not mine. I liked and still like how it felt. Though like the dress, it's a fits a bit differently now.

Despite my ability to physically cover mainly my chest and hips with it, this is not a dress to be worn in the presence of respectable adults. Now that I have had time away from this strappy time capsule, I must say that it puts the little in "little black dress." I shake my head at my juvenile taste. Back then, I loved wearing what my boyfriend bought me. Even if later I would consider it to be underwear.

The saying goes that hindsight is 20/20. But in this instance, hindsight will be less and less. No one should show that much hind without charging for a glimpse. And I certainly didn't go to college to learn how to do THAT.

sought

When I was in high school, my mother's coworker came to visit one day and with her brought her 4 year-old son. Alex was an adorable little boy with wide brown eyes and a sweet sense of trust.

As our mothers spoke, we played a game of Hide and Seek. I would count loudly as the seeker while Alex would hide just as loudly. He never knew that I could hear his scurrying into the nooks around our house. Every time I would find him, he'd giggle with surprise. His laugh was full of delight and a joy of having shared a secret: his hiding place.

One time, as I neared the finale of my audible enumeration, I realized that I didn't know where he had gone. He'd actually managed to hide himself and had quietly tucked into a place I couldn't guess.

I wandered around the first floor, asking my mother and her friend for leads. They hadn't seen him so I figured that he must have gone to the second floor. As I walked up the stairs, I heard a tiny voice echo from far back in a room. "Katie...come find me!" And I did.

Announcements. The way we are found. It's a twig snapping in the woods as the hunter evades a grizzly. It's lit flares. A neon sign. It's a profile on match.com. When we wish to be discovered, we must proclaim our whereabouts.

I used to believe that fate would intervene. Despite their efforts, everyone would receive their rewards in commensurate proportion to an unknown plan. But I'm starting to change my tune. I see now that there are steps we take to essentially ask for more. Whether we receive it may still be part of a plan but to announce a desire by way of moving or shaking or hustling, this is clearer to me now. To not move would be to hide.

In believing, I shouted next to the ocean today. I gave my exact coordinates to the universe and asked it to find me. I made my presence known because I am in need of discovering. Olly olly oxen free.

the folly of a follicle

A knot is a unit of measure used by seafarers to reference their speed in the water. Also employed by pilots, one knot is one nautical mile which is approximately 1.151 mph.

Though mistakenly considered a auditory abbreviation, the term knot isn't a shortening of nautical mile. It's a reference to the old school way devised by ingenious sailors to help keep track of their adventures. Simply, a piece of wood called a chip log was carved in an agreed-upon shape and tied to an extremely long rope. The rope, called a log line, was tied with knots at increments of 47.25 feet. One sailor would cast the chip log and its log line into the water while the ship was moving and a second sailor would keep time with a 28 second sand glass, like a modified hourglass. The knots that would unspool would be counted against the time and the ship's speed could be calculated. With a little bit of math, of course.

I learned about this log from an article about blogging sent to me by grad student and personal hero An. In the same way that ship logs were almost forgery proof due to their real-time nature, blogs serve as real-time notations of our adventures and thoughts. Markers that you read newest to oldest in anti-chronological order.

As I idly stroked my hair in a meeting the other day, my fingers teased out a strand of hair that was oddly textured. It wasn't smooth like the rest but lumpy and wavy with various spots thinner than others. With a scientific inquisition, I ran my fingertips along its entire length from my scalp to its end and noticed that a third of it, a section closest to my head, was normal. This seemed to suggest that most recently, this follicle was producing shiny, smooth and healthy hair. I was so morbidly fascinated by this biological abnormality that when I got home that night, I snipped the strand and saved the section that contains the varying thicknesses. I studied it wondering what had happened. Was it evidence of undulating health?

Hair springs forth from our heads as a product of protein and calcium. Its qualities such as straight or curly or grey can be dictated by genetics and by stress, age or nutrition. It is a log, though a thin one, that recounts your state of being.

The speed at which hair grows is approximately 0.5" per month. From end to end, the original length of this abnormal strand of my hair is about 18". It's been about 27 months since my last haircut which would mean that my hair grows a bit faster than normal at about 0.66" per month.

With a little math, I laid a ruler down and the strand of hair beside it. I looked at what months fell where based on my calculations. Working backwards with the evidence before me, the two and a quarter years from my past came flooding back in a tidal wave of memories. There is no precision in marking the months and days but the general appearance of depleted proteins fell in line with a period of time when I worked for a company that challenged me in both good and bad ways. I loved this job and easily worked six days a week, at least 10 hours a day tackling strategy, politics and minutia. Towards the end, a mentor commented to my then boss, "You've basically left her in a boat in the middle of the ocean and told her to fish with no net." I worked a dream job and it worked me.

This period was also noteworthy as I was then in love with the chef I've mentioned before. I see now that my hair kept time as we danced a tenuous pas de deux. Inch 1: He told me he didn't like me romantically. Inch 1.66: We weren't speaking. Inch 2.1: He'd find a reason to re-engage us. Inch 2.33: We were hanging out every day. And so on. For months, he vacillated between occupying and vacating my apartment leaving my hair and me wavy and uneven.

Though the seven inches of this log line strand that are still attached to me are silky, it is not always smooth sailing. The winds change. My hair becomes knotted. The tides rise. And I attempt to stay the course with sails and line to manage the journey. There are days that drag without a breeze for miles. The sheets are slack and the progress is nil. There are blustery days that toss me about, knotting my hair and making me motion sick. And as I try to right myself, my body retains the breaks and malnourishment as evidence to exhibit my fallibility and my recuperation. And as I try to write myself in between it all, with words I log.