Author Archives: jasonh52gmailcom

Scene from a marriage – A poem (Backdrop: Dad works 4 days a week away from home. Mom stays home with 2 sons – a teenager and a toddler) Mom got up early to pack us breakfast Dad drives us to school. Dad sits on his chair, reading his newspaper.  Mom cleans. Mom makes lunch.Continue reading “My mother's son”

(TW: Discussion about class, race, diversity, and inclusion – not at all like the title and the thirst-trap-y hoy-boy-summer photo suggests) I could hear my mom scoff as she tells me to go put some clothes on and this whole Canadian suntanning thing is not for us Vietnamese people. Growing up, she will chase usContinue reading “Brown boy summer”

  It is apt that we spent the Summer Soltice – National Indigenous Peoples Day in the mountain, hiking, and appreciating the earth. It’s appropriate that I’m finishing “Brading Sweetgrass” (Please read t if you haven’t. It’s a series of short essays, a very easy but tremendously insightful book) When I was young, it wasContinue reading “The Honourable Harvest”

  Sometimes I wonder what happened to fairy tales after they end. It’s not a novel thought by any means. Countless artists have imagined aging housewife Disney princesses, broke-ass and fat superheroes. It is a core concept of Buddhism. Our suffering doesn’t end as long as we still desire a fairy tale ending. If youContinue reading “After a fairy tale”

  It started relatively early for me, since I was in my early twenties, that I wanted to become a stay-at-home monk when I get older. It’s an oxymoron, I know, as one does not set goals to be enlightened. But I set goal to everything 🙂  Perhaps it’s not by accident that all depictionsContinue reading “Garden vs. Chaos”

  I think somewhere along the way of having a good job, a good house, and a great partner, I’ve lost a part of myself.  It never used to bother me to travel alone, to have dinner out alone, to make my own food, then do my own dishes after. It never used to botherContinue reading “Self help”

 “It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.” – Joy / Everything Everywhere All atContinue reading “The everything bagel”

Every good story is a trilogy  I’m coming home, as the bubbly attendant at the gate is announcing, “If Calgary is home”, I couldn’t help but wonder, is it? Is it still? The pandemic has been hard. Marriage has not been easy. Jobs changes have not been easy. Losing friends and not having time forContinue reading “In the pursuit of stories – Part 3”

In Chicago, some old stories are revisited, reversed, and renewed. I visited Chicago 16 years ago. I only had a brief 2 days here, there was a shooting, and I was only a very scared young foreign student to be traveling alone. Well, technically I got stuck at Chicago Ohare airport A LOT (Thanks, United),Continue reading “In the pursuit of stories – Part 2”

  So I met the 28-year-old resident for a “date” (don’t freak out, I asked for permission, the guy knows I’m married, and we didn’t do anything). We spent four hours walking around Boston, through the parks, the bridges, the streets. The diffused sun behind us illuminated his teal jacket, as if a tasteful indieContinue reading “In the pursuit of stories – Part 1”