another sad attempt

one night in seoul (part 13)

2009-04-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

our guesthouse was up a tight alley in gyedong, nestled just below Changdeok Palace. the entire neighborhood is preserved by the city of seoul as traditional korean housing, including the guesthouse. we were greeted at the gate by two enormous dogs and a little, old korean man who spoke broken english, at best. it was all so charming. we walked through the large garden to our cottage, which was everything you'd expect of a traditional korean cottage. shoes lined the exteriors of each doorway, each door a sliding shoji. there was something so powerful about finally experiencing an image i'd held for so long.

seoul guesthouse

i was permitted a brief nap, shower and shit. and then we were off. we walked the cobblestone road toward the subway, submerged in the depth of a summer unavoidable. even at dusk, the heat resonated, as i breathed in the swimmable air of an escape i'd never fathomed. when everything is foreign, distant and new, for at least a fleeting moment, your past exists on a separate plane. sometimes it's enough. soometimes it's all you need. i relished it, ear to ear. and the persistent buzz of the cicadas, like a wire torn in two, reaked of the disconnected circuitry i was feeling and existing in. it was so welcoming. so freeing.

we descended into the subway, which was a world unto itself. a city beneath the surface; shops and restaurants in every cranny, crack and crevice. as most of the shops had already closed for the night, we were relegated to eyeing jewelry, taxidermy and knock-offs purses through the windows as we passed.

while i have always lived in very diverse cities (portland being the exception) and had traveled quite a bit through mexico, i found it quite jarring to be so submerged in an asian culture. robert, monique and i were noticably the only non koreans in the station and on the train and seemingly the entire city. koreans brave enough in their english skills would approach us time and time again, asking from where we were traveling. each response of "america" garnered shit-eating grins, peace signs, and almost always a photo-op. i know this would seem an exaggeration, but i swear to shit, see for yourself. you'll feel like a celebrity. i can't even begin to imagine how many photos there are of robert, monique and i with random korean hipster kids.

we arrived in the hongdae neighborhood around tennish. it is hands down the hippest neighborhood i have ever been to. it is essentially the mass convergence of hipster, pop, designer-chic and faux harajaku cultures all in fifteen or so square blocks. we drowned in a sea of neon, motorcycles, dolce & gabana and blaring korean and american pop music. there was nary an apartment or house in sight; merely block after block of bars, clubs, cafes and shopping that would make any sixteen year old girl cream herself: american apparel, puma, marc jacobs, flight one, versace, and so and on for what seemed like forever.

hongdae district

we squeezed into a ramen bar and found a group of robert's friends, who were also teaching english there. and much to my delight, every single one of the seven of us had lived in new orleans at the same time! this is what i love about that city: everywhere you go, you run into nola'ers; and they're always the coolest, nicest, most interesting people. i gazed at the menu, entirely in korean and simply said, "no cheese, no mushrooms, no weird animals, preferably pork, chicken or shrimp." a humongous bowl of shrimp and god knows what else arrived moments later. since all the other kids had been done long before our arrival, i did my best to slam the mystery concoction, while talking about life pre and post katrina and living in seoul.

after we finished our ramen, robert's friends scott and angela smiled and presented robert with a gift. robert than smiled and looked at monique and me, "tonight is going to be so much fun! we have to find something to put this in! to the liquor store!" the entire group walked down a parkside street to a liquor store, where we bought 3 20ozs. evidently, much like new orleans, seoul has no open container laws because we strolled into the park, which was full of drunk korean club kids and rubbish. robert popped the cap off one of the beers and told us to take a few big gulps and then return the bottle. monique and i complied, without question or hesitation. robert then proceeded to poor the contents of a 8oz bottle into the beer, shake it up, and pass it back to us.

"drink up." he said.
"what is it?" we asked in unison.
"it's like ghb-"
then scott chimed in, "it's legal here. sort of."
i made a face, which was apparent when robert responded with, "you'll love it. it's like being really drunk and a little bit like being on ecstacy."
my only concern then was if it would give me the killer hangover ecstacy had when i used to recreationally do it years and years before. robert assured it would not; well, at least not so severely.

so, down the hatch.

as we drank the beer/ghb concoction, an old korean man passed with a wheelbarrel full of korean wine. robert bought two bottles, popped those open and passed them into the circuit of what was now two beer/ghb bottles, one standard beer bottle, one soju bottle and the two bottles of wine. a few local kids approached and tried their english on us, as we chatted with this painfully cute, yet horribly dumb girl who had also lived in new orleans. when she and her friend saw a collection of white kids, they immediately sidled on. americans in korea seem to do this with other americans.

hongdae park

after about ten minutes i felt wasted and an extreme need to shit. am i going to shit my pants, again?* robert told us that the feeling simply meant the ghb was starting to kick-
i could no longer speak without slurring or see straight. it was dizzying and horrifying and... wonderful. monique and i looked at one another, grinning wide. we tried to relate the experience; but words simply spilled out of our mouths, a mess of excitement and intoxication, and into the empty bottles and leaflets that surrounded us.

it was now close to eleven, and scott would be spinning at a club in the neighborhood, which was only described as the coolest club we'd ever attend; something of a cavern, they said. so we stumbled through the streets of hongdae, laughing, singing and dancing in anticipation of what would become one of the craziest nights of my life.

*From: Anonymous

Date: Wed, Oct 3, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Subject: those magical moments
To: [all my friend]

as many of you know, my roommates and i spent the weekend inside ill. during this time, we learned that mixing certain cold meds produced a rather atrocious gas problem. however, we also learned that over-medicating ourselves made this gas problem much more manageable.

well, by the close of monday night we were all starting to feel better, and were definitely experiencing cabin fever. so, i was determined to do something with my evening last night. i woke up, had some sudafed and dayquil and ventured to work. i had my usual morning coffee and doughnut, and went about my day in the typical manner. perhaps it was the combination of over-medication and determination to enjoy the evening that led me to answer a phone call i'd been avoiding for weeks now. you see, the ex-boyfriend's best friend had been trying, unsuccessfully, to have a few drinks. for all the obvious reasons, i'd been resistant to this idea. well, she caught me off guard and plans were made. drinks at the bar across the street at 8.

in the meantime, i'd made plans to meet a friend for coffee at 4. (for those of you keeping track, that's: 3 coffees, two tablespoons of dayquil, two sudafed ams, 1 chocolate bar). after coffee, i ran a few errands and arrived at home in time to prepare inna for her date. by the time inna got out the door, i had about ten minutes before i had to meet the ex's friend. so i threw on my big coat (it was raining pretty heavily) and walked over.

over a glass of wine, we did the chit chat thing. and once that had exhausted itself, the inevitable conversation found it's way to the bar. sparing you the details, the bulk was talk of reconciliation. much to most peoples' chagrin, this was not something i was adverse to. the conversation began to get somewhat deep and heavy, and was interrupted when nature called.

for those of you who haven't been to the bar across the street, it has two unisex bathrooms; one on either side of the bar. the one to the left is at the end of a short hallway, which contains a side door that exits onto the street, and is directly across the street from our front door. the bathroom to the right has no hallway or exit door. more often than not, i use the bathroom to the right, because the bathroom to the left is somewhat bigger and we all know my fear of large bathrooms. i did not deviate from this habit last night. unbeknownst to me, this decision would become the greatest mistake of my life.

(for those of you keeping track: 3 coffees, two tablespoons of dayquil, two sudafed ams, 1 chocolate bar, 1.5 glasses of wine)

i faced the toilet, unzipped and started to pee. and then... then...

i was greeted by the worst surprise ever.

i shat my pants.

i shat my pants!

ohmygodohmygodohmygod. i shat my pants.

i was overcome by a shitstorm, if you will, of panic. sparing you the grim details, i will say i was able to restrain the majority of nature's little accident. so i did the quickest 180 ever, and deposited the remainder in the proper receptacle. and then... then i didn't know what to do. i was trapped. i was trapped with only me and my shame. had i chosen the bathroom to the left i would have been met by a door to clean underwear and moist towels. but i chose wrong. horribly, horribly wrong.

now it has been told that some in this same situation have celebrated by throwing their feces onto the walls and clogging up sinks and showers. having been raised with dignity and etiquette classes, i had to deal with the situation with grace. i assessed the damage, and decided that my newest, cutest pair of american apparel underwear were not disposable. i knew i had to make haste, to avoid being gone for too long and creating suspicion. i called inna, who did not answer. i'm not really sure what i thought she could do to help resolve this situation, but like i said i was somewhat panic stricken. so i did what any mature, responsible adult who shits themself would do. i wiped ferociously and then poured heavy doses of soap into my pants and returned to the bar to finish our wine and conversation.

the next five minutes have become the most uncomfortable five minutes of my life. there is no feeling even remotely comparable to that of talking to your ex-boyfriend's best friend about the reconciliation you plan to make, while the toxic sludge one can only call "shoap" roots around in your ass. but i am proud to say i was a pooper trooper, and finished my drink without even a hint at the atrocities quietly happening to me. after our drink, i slid off the barstool and slid on my long jacket (thank god for rain), said goodbye and non-chalantly walked home.

upon entering my house i did what everyone does when they shit themselves. i called colette to brag. and then jen.

inna returned from her date, with her date, to find me standing in the living room in only my underwear, laughing hysterically into the phone. i immediately hung up and regaled both of them of the night's events. and then i apologized for being rude and introduced myself to her date.

welcome to korea (part 12)

2009-04-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

the flight from portland to seoul was a long 16 hours, including a 2 hour layover at narita airport in tokyo. i had slammed two double shot bloody marys before boarding the plane, in hopes they would knock me out. instead they merely reduced me to a slightly drunken mess that had to pee every hour or two. i dozed in and out of a few brief catnaps, and upon waking would check the flight map to see how far from home, how close to asia we were. it was a strange feeling to see the little cartoon plane so far out to sea. so far from everywhere i had ever been. so close to adventure, to mystery, to my ex. i lost myself in the vast sea below.

when i deboarded the plane in seoul i was immediately faced with my reality. i was farther from home than i'd ever been, in a foreign place, about to meet to complete strangers with whom i'd spend the next 3 and a half weeks of my life. two complete strangers with whom we'd have to rely upon one another to travel through and experience so many new things. it was overwhelming, but so exciting. i was recharged and energized, even on no sleep for literally days.

i exited through the arrivals gate and into the lobby of the most beautiful airport i've ever seen. incheon airport truly is a marvel of luxury. corridors of high ceilings, lined with orchids and sconces; high end shops as far as the eye could see: dolce & gabana, fendi, marc jacobs, rolex and so forth and so on. it's almost a place you'd want to spend a day, watching exciting travelers walk and shop and talk their ways to new places, to loved ones, to grander and wider days away.

i planted myself on a bench in the lobby, not quite sure what to do. there was no sign of robert nor monique, i had no phone, no idea how to get anywhere. after about ten minutes i began to panic a bit. i was alone, in the middle of night, and-

then i saw two small figures rushing toward me at full speed, clad in backpacks, laughter and grins. once they were close enough to identify, robert and monique immediately swung around and continued on, at full speed, away from me down the corridor. robert was tall, lanky, awkward and eminated fun and excitement and energy and was just a supernova unto himself. monique's curly hair was shaped into a high mohawk and dyed yellow, pink and black. it was hard to take your eyes off. i smiled, too tired to chase or even get off the bench. i stood upon it instead, crossed my arms, and tapped my foot with exaggerated impatience. they stopped in their tracks, turned around, and then almost aimlessly returned to me with hugs and hellos.

i was too overwhelmed and exhausted to make any opinions on the greeting; and just happy to make our way to the guesthouse, where i was told i could nap for an hour. it was now twilight in seoul, and robert had big plans for us. we made it to the bus terminal in time to find we'd missed our bus back to the city. with the little korean robert knows and his massive amounts of charm, we were able to exchange our bus tickets for cab fare. thank god.

we rode the twenty miles into the city quietly and with wide eyes. i watched the mud flats of incheon spread and thicken and harden into soil through the cracked windows of the cab. and suddenly the dark and dense no where broke into the bright lights of one of the largest cities in the world. we crossed the river into a blur of sounds and signs and insanity. it was exhillerating. we rolled the windows down entirely and let the wind wisp across our faces as we drown in the expanse. i turned to robert and smiled.

"welcome to korea, monkey."

interlogue: what is

2009-03-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

sometimes when it's late at night and the room is silent and you're all alone, you wonder how it can still sting so harshly. if you should be allowed to feel it resonate still. still when it surrounds you. maybe repression begets obsession. when it comes, it comes in droves. you think of all the things you want. you want so little. and you wonder if you can get through this. if you can get to them. it's hard. and hardest because no one told you it wasn't going to be, because no one says it still won't; but because you continue to refuse to let yourself accept how hard it is. to allow yourself your grief. you're a hard person. time has made you stoic. time has made you still. still you ache to just break down. just once. into arms. but you don't know how to ask. you don't know how to tear the veneer. how to just be. even when you write about it, you write it as though it's someone else. as though it wasn't you. you write it as distance, as distant; an insistent nag. but it's not. this is you.
this is me. this is me. it's me.

getting there (part 11)

2009-01-23T18:37:00.000-08:00

i am not the type of person who sits around waiting for rainbows. i am not an optimist. i am hopeful, but not optimistic. i have a hard time believing that just because you are a good person, good things will happen to you. i think at some point, forever ago, i did. i don't know how or when i came to lose that. but i did. i don't sit around waiting for rainbows.

i am not a religious person. i won't go into all the hypocrisies and fraud i see there. i just don't believe in god or praying or angels. but i do believe if i had a guardian angel, it would be robert.

it was sometime after hiv and before colette that it happened. i will forever be enslaved to social networking sites. i love them. i like having all these little windows into the lives of people you know and knew and barely knew way back when. how you can see the ways they see things. how you can see the minutia of their days. how you can see different shades of almost anyone. i love how they change the way we see people. the way we see each other. i, at some point, have been a member of all of them. eventually the older ones fall by the wayside, only to be remembered upon some random email. and that's how it happened. that's how this whole can of worms was opened. this whole, wonderful, life-changing can of worms.

most people don't know the real story about how exactly i found myself in asia. had i told most people the truth, they probably would have demanded i stay behind here. my mother would have had a coronary. so i skewered the facts. had i told people it was a complete stranger who i would be meeting in korea and traveling through southeast asia with, well, they just wouldn't have understood.

it was sometime after hiv and before colette that i got that random email. a gmail message from the long-forgotten friendster, letting me know i had a new message. i'm not even sure why i even checked it. i was at the end of my rope, not much mattered to me, and certainly correspondence from strangers on friendster did not. maybe it was after insomnia had begun and i was bored. maybe it was one of the lonely days. i don't know. but i checked it.

the message was from a guy named robert. he had found me on friendster, and then myspace, and liked my profiles. he, too, had lived in portland and new orleans; sometimes overlapping my own stays. i have been blogging since i was 19 years old. and, well, he found all the blogs, too. and he read them all. every one, every page. he read about the rape and the hiv and everything that came before. the heartbreak. the moves. new orleans. the momentous occasions in my life, that now somehow meant something to someone other than me. he said he was inspired. he said that he'd laughed and cried and had become attached to me and my writing. he said that i was someone worth knowing. and right then, in that moment, it was all i needed from anyone.

and with that came the proposition that made my jaw drop. he wanted to fly me out to korea, where he was teaching english. and from there, off to somewhere new. he said the worse case scenario would be i get a free trip with a guy i hate. and the best case, i make a lifelong friend and do something i'd never otherwise be able to. and for him? he gets to do something for someone he respects, who needs good news. it was insane. it was way too much. and there was no way in my right mind i was ever going. i couldn't do it, right? no way.

when my roommate at the time came home from work, i couldn't wait to tell her about the crazy guy who offered to fly me half way around the world. she sat down across from me as i told her about his email. she made a face that implied he was creepy crazy, and this was before i even mentioned the offer. and when i did, she became incredulous. she demanded i hand her the computer so she could see this lunatic for herself.

"i know him! i fucking know this guy!"
"from portland?" i asked.
"no! from philly!"
robert had mentioned that he used to live in philadelphia. my roomate had grown up there. and way back when they were friends. and had lost touch shortly after she arrived in portland, two years prior. she called him beautiful, insanely nice and one of the most fun people she'd ever met. she said i was stupid if i didn't accept the offer. and then she demanded his email address, so she could email him.

a few days later, we found out our next door neighbor's boyfriend was very good friends with him in portland, and that they still talked weekly. a few days after that, i found out two other good friends (in new orleans and sf) both knew him. and as my world got smaller and smaller, i became more and more sure that this was an opportunity i had to take. i don't think i even realized that my disposition had slowly changed from hopeless to excited. but suddenly i did realize that life was good, because now i had something look forward to. something to live for. and four months later when the tickets actually arrived, when the trip became tangeable, i found myself wondering how something so good could happen to me. wondering if maybe rainbows will come, if you wait long enough. if you wait out the storms.

during the insomnia, robert and i talked every night. when i was at my lowest, he was there. when i was excited for our trip, he was there. i had gone from alone and miserable to having this life savior, who was always there for me. everything changed, so quickly. so necessarily. he saved me; and i don't even think he knew it. i had something to look forward to.

our misfortunes may become us (part 10)

2008-12-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

i have severe abandonment issues. in all relationships, i only see an end. i spend so much time nervously waiting for the phone to stop ringing, for the door to close on me, for something to happen that will tear the people i love from me. i have severe abandonment issues.

as a child, the people i loved either left or left me in the hands of people who would hurt me. i watched my grandfather beat the shit out of my grandmother. i watched a family of alcoholics drink themselves into rages and tear each other apart. i was molested, for years, by other family members who were supposed to be looking after me. i learned not to trust that people would take care of me. i learned not to trust. and i learned that the people you love will either leave you or hurt you. or you'll watch them hurt themselves, helplessly. it's not now what i believe, but it's how i've been conditioned. and so i have severe abandonment issues. and these issues, this fear, has caused me to inadvertently live a very isolated life. in a crowded room, in the arms of a lover, in the eyes of my parents, i feel alone. i fear departure. i panic of loss. i try so hard to hold on, but always feel so powerless.

i don't remember much between ryan's departure from me, and my departure from san francisco. it was as though i became a ghost that day; the day he left. i'd finally found someone i believed would stay. someone i believed i could hang onto. and then he was gone. he was gone. gone. and suddenly, i was nothing more than a ghost. each day just blurred into the next. every action and inaction seemed pointless, seemed moot. it was like each day existed only because it had to. i floated through the walls and my words were merely exhalations. i was alone.

and then i ran away to portland. to escape the traces of him and who we were. to escape the traces of who i was. and perhaps, just maybe, to exist as i had felt: alone. to get lost where i knew no one, where no one knew me. to lose myself in foreign faces and places. to lose myself in a lack of history. to lose myself.

instead, though, i built myself a home. a life. a new history. i tried to date, but no one ever measured up to him. no one was ever enough. and then i got hiv. and everything changed. or, merely, returned to how it had been before i left california. i felt alone and isolated and barely there. i was losing more and more of myself every day. i was withering away into bottles and bed sheets and brittle bones. i stopped eating. i stopped answering the phone. i drank myself dizzy, night after night. i was becoming a ghost. again.

and then i lost my job. and then my boyfriend. and then i just lost it. i totally lost it. i had stopped coming up for air. i had stopped coming up at all. each day existed only because it had to. insomnia set in and got so bad i could no longer distinguish my dreams from reality. there were days i laid in bed and did nothing but fantasize about blowing my brains out. sometimes those were the good days, too. paranoia overcame me. and i became completely distorted by it, by the dreams, by the booze. and the scariest part about it was i could walk outside, with a smile on my face, and hang out like everything was peachy-fucking-keen. you'd never know. they'd never know.

and then i broke. i called colette and simply said, "i've been thinking bad thoughts. i've been thinking about dying. i'm not all right. i'm not okay."

she was out a week later. and i started to feel safe again. and i started to eat again. and i started to see straight again. and i started to let go. of all the rage. of all the pain. of all the fear. i did my best. for a while, at least.

eventually i started to erode to it, again. i began to push the people who cared about me away. so they couldn't leave me. so they couldn't hurt me. so i could be in control of something. so i wouldn't feel so powerless to loss. it's fucked up. it's totally fucked up. but my heart was so broken, i could make no more room for cracks or tears. i could make no more room for love. i needed permanence. and permanence seemed so impossible to come by. nothing and no one is permanent.

---

and then i met a boy. and he sure did seem to love me. and i thought he was great. he was great. and i thought, no one will ever be ryan. i will never love anyone like i did ryan. so someone great will always have to be enough. and even in that shitty paradox i had prefixed, i needed to hold onto him. i needed permanence. i needed a normal, easy, simple life. i needed a simple life so badly. i needed something new to live for. i needed soething new to experience; something new to help me forget. i needed this to work. i needed it to work.

so after a month and a half, i asked him to marry me. and he said yes. and within a month, he was all moved in. and the life i painted for myself would surely begin with this little step. i was prepared to settle for consistency. i was prepared to contently settle in whatever promised to be simple and routine. i needed some stability. so i created it out of fear and heartache and necessity. because i have severe abandonment issues.

and then i left for asia...

no (part 9)

2008-11-18T15:49:00.000-08:00

judgment. we all make judgment calls. we all quietly judge. because, whether we want to believe it or not, these judgment calls are what get us through life. it all boils down to judgment. and we will be amazed by the things we're willing to do to protect ourselves from the bad judgment calls we will make. even as this cursor blinks away at me.

it's our hands first. when we realize we've made some disastrous mistake, our hands are the first to react. be it flight or fight, our hands will clench. we'll try to push away the problem with our hands. and we only hope, whatever the problem may be, it is smaller than our hands. me, i have small, trembling hands; from an accident, in a pool.

and when our hands can't protect us from our bad judgment calls, we rely on our heads. when our hands can't stop what's happening, we rely on our heads to fix it. to change it. to make it easier to swallow. we change the parameters, we hypnotize ourselves, we reprimand ourselves; all in effort to ensure we never make a bad judgment call again. we blame our judgment when bad things we can't control happen to us. and that is how we protect ourselves.

we protect ourselves by protecting our loved ones. we put our faces to the corners. we hyper-sensitize everything. we put our backs to the walls, and judge with severity and intensity. we lose sight of everything but protecting ourselves from the bad judgment calls we will make. we cry when we know no one's listening. we half-heartedly convince ourselves there was nothing we could do. not because this is how we feel; simply because this is how we should feel. instead, though, we chalk it up to bad judgment and try to laugh it to nothing. we try to make it so small we can't allow ourselves to feel it. we try to make it so small we can fight it off with our small, trembling hands.

i stood in the intersection, in the rain, a bag full of broken glass at my feet and pickles rolling around me. i stood in the intersection, defeated. i stood there trying to figure out how i would juggle the 5 other plastic bags in my small, trembling hands, collect myself, and pick up the mess at my feet. i felt myself start to well up inside. i felt the tears starting to hold residency behind my eyes. and all i could think, as i came closer and closer to crying, was, "i was really excited for those pickles." i was frustrated. i was tired. i was standing in the street, in the rain, cars driving around me, with pickles rolling around at my feet. twenty to thirty mini pickles rolling around before me. and i wasn't sure if i was about to laugh or cry. or both. it wasn't the pickles. it wasn't the mess. i made a bad judgment call and my hands were too small. it was my god damn hands. too small to hold it all together. too small to push away. too small to do anything but tremble under pressure.

i must have stood there for at least an entire minute, just staring down at all the tiny little pickles. then i heard a woman at the nearby bus stop call out to me. "sometimes you just have to walk away."

"yeah. sometimes i think i'm invincible." i said back to her. "and then it surprises me when i realize i'm not." she chuckled. and i took her advice. i left my mess there in the street, and walked away.

half a block later, two girls pulled up and told me to get in. "we saw what happened back there. it's raining. you have a lot of groceries. you shouldn't have to walk." so, i got in and they drove me the four blocks home. i sat in the backseat, next to a child's car-seat full of home made blueberry muffins. i wanted one so bad. i was so hungry.

i made a bad judgment call. i made a bad judgment call and something bad happened. i was trying to root for the underdog, and i got bit. and my hands were too small. and my words meant nothing. and i woke up hypnotized. simply hypnotized. sometimes i think i'm invincible. and then it surprises me when i'm not. it kills me when i'm not. and so, sometimes you just have to walk away. i made a bad judgment call, but it doesn't mean it was my fault. it doesn't mean i had any control over it.

we will be amazed by the things we are willing to do to protect ourselves when something bad happens.

---

i had been in portland for less than two weeks, still lost in the break-up that broke my heart. but now lost amongst foreign faces, in this strange new city, in the coldest winter i'd ever experienced. we'd just been bowling. i hate bowling now. i hate it.

he was one of four people i knew in town. he'd just returned to the area from an assignment with the air force. he was so nice and welcoming and sincere. and a dead-ringer for patrick dempsey. he was someone i was glad to have met.

he called me at around midnight, crying. the guy he'd been very loosely seeing had told him the relationship he so wanted wasn't going to happen. he was heart-broken. and it was late. but if there was anyone i could sympathize with at that moment, in the wake of my own break-up, it was him. i opened a bottle of wine and waited by the door.

had i known he was already drunk, i wouldn't have invited him over or opened that bottle of wine. that bottle of wine was the last i had before alcohol changed for me. the last i had before life changed for me. this night would become my centrifuge. this endless spinning vessel. despite his intoxication, i poured two glasses. then two more. until the bottle was empty. we talked. we played scrabble. i didn't know what to say. i felt so horrible for him. for what he was going through. for what we were going through. and then i kissed him. i kissed him. i started it. i started it all.

we ended up in my bed, making out. not for long, however, before i realized how stupid it was. this was not how i wanted to start my life in a new city: being the drunken rebound for one of my very few friends. i suggested we stop, which seemed to go unheard. so i repeated myself more firmly, louder. but he didn't stop. instead he pulled my pants off. i was shocked by his brazen disregard. i told him to stop. but he didn't. he didn't stop. he never stopped. it never stopped. i found myself lost in the word, as i repeated it over and over again, so numbly. no. no. he was bigger and my hands were too small. i fell away from myself, except the overwhelming constant thought: i did this. i did this.

when it was finally over, he kissed my forehead, rolled over and went to sleep. in my bed. in my bed. like it was nothing. like it didn't matter at all. a kiss on the forehead as though to console. to construe some good intention. to compensate for the life now left behind.

even now, i wonder if he knew. even now, i wonder if he knows he gave me hiv. i wonder if he cares. but i always cut myself off. i can't think about too long, or else i lose it. i lose myself. my bones go limp and my heart sinks into my stomach and hatred is all i feel. and so suddenly my anger just permeates. through every pore and word and whisper.

i made a bad judgment call. i fucking hate bowling.

truth be told (part 8)

2008-11-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

i woke up exhausted. and hungover. we'd stayed out late drinking in old town siem reap. and then handing out boxes of food to kids who, common sense would dictate, were up way past their bedtimes. of course, much like the surrounding jungles, night predation is the most successful. who better to hand out money and food than drunken tourists. i smiled at their guile.

we had an early start to a long day, neither of which i was feeling under the haze of two pitchers of margaritas and countless singhas. i even pretended to sleep through the alarm, hoping monique and robert would follow suit. i assumed success when the alarm was silenced and no one arose. but ten minutes later robert got up to pee and monique gave me a look. i ceded.

we took a tuk-tuk on what was called an impossible untertaking for such a journey. it was about twenty miles of mostly dirt road, deep into the jungle, far away from the creature comforts culled in the corridors and concrete of the city. we passed through three or four villages that i can only assume are typical of the country; no plumbing, no pavement, no electricity. these were different, though. they were nothing like the ghettoes of poipet. they were soft places full of smiling faces. they were communities, through and through, like nothing we've ever experienced in america. kids ran along the road with their dogs, waving wildly as we passed. teenage boys and their dads worked the fields. mothers tended to their kids and streetside stalls. it seemed neither daunting nor depressing, merely primitive. primitive, but inviting. there were moments i caught the other two staring off somewhat enviously. it looked so simple, so warm, so devoid of the stupid plight we pillage through each day. and all the children waved wildly, smiling big. we smiled big and waved wildly. simply and sincerely.

we arrived to a tiny enclave of stalls bordering a dirt parking lot. per usual, we were bombarded by children and women forcing merchandise upon us. declining never got any easier or less heart-breaking. especially with the kids. it never gets easier. even when you find yourself growing accustomed to it; that's when you catch yourself writing it off as something that merely happens. that's when you catch yourself turning a blind eye to the poverty. it's amazing the things, that over time, you'll convince yourself are okay.

we found the trail that would lead us through the thick, thick jungle and up the mountain to remnants of a remote temple now buried under overgrowth, erosion, and river. all along the 2-mile trail were signs warning us to stay on the marked path, as the countryside is now littered with landmines. and while i took this seriously, i questioned how many landmines could possibly be scattered throughout such a large country.

truth be told, approximately one thousand five hundred eighty cambodians are killed every year from these mines. and many more are left as dismembered reminders of our own heartlessness. and while i would never consider myself a great historian, i was confident we'd never fought a war in or with cambodia. so how could we be responsible for all these disasters? evidently, after vietnam, pilots and soldiers were encouraged to get ridof any leftover landmines, as they flew home over cambodia and laos. that's right. over 60,000 deaths in one of the poorest nations in the world, for the sake of lightening our loads. we did this. we did this. for no reason at all. 60,000 men, women and children who have hard enough lives already. i'm sure for the sake of saving fuel, saving time. 60,000 unnecessary, unprovoked deaths. and those are only the mines that have gone off since.

it was a somber and almost silent climb. i thought about the life laid out before me. the life laying in my wake. the lives i'd never known. was i ungrateful? was i too mired in my own past to succeed in my future? in less than two weeks i would be returning home to a fiance. to someone i wasn't convinced i ought to be with at all, let alone marrying. and all the while, i was still stuck in a relationship that had been extinct for over two years. a relationship i didn't know how to let go. how do you let go of love? at a certain point it's no longer healthy to hold onto it. and i had been holding on for so long. holding on hope. holding my breath.

without exxagerration, i can say there wasn't a day since we'd broken up that i hadn't hoped he'd come sauntering through the door. sauntering back to me. not a single day. no matter who i was seeing or how in love i thought i was. no matter where i went, how far away he seemed, no matter whatever i was going through. not a single day. i'd gotten engaged to someone i hardly knew, not out of love, but as a means to extinguish him. as a way to extinguish the hope that we would come walking back in. and yet, there i was thousand of miles from anything, hoping he'd be waiting atop that mountain for me. it was just like any other day. no matter the new circumstances i'd created or fallen into.

i climbed that hillside, in silence, a million miles from anything. lost somewhere between the heartaches of poverty and loneliness. a paradox that made me feel like a fraud; a selfish liar. and no one knew. no one knew what i had done. and i had no idea how to redeem myself.

i woke up exhausted.

softly, slowly (part 7)

2008-10-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

the first thing i ever saw was the opening of a car door, through a perfectly paned window, in a cell in a subdivision, in the autumn of the desert. everything that came after or before was simply a reverberation of this moment. of this first sight. of this first memory. the rings of a rock, dropped and drowning, in the stillness of the waters that surround us. life doesn't happen in any particular order. calendars pale in comparison to the values and the verdicts. time doesn't happen in any particular order. my past, present and future all started then. that day. peering through the shutter blades.

now and again i find myself peering out through blinds i've hung around myself. trying to find a familiar sight. trying to find a way to the door. people come and go, with greater frequency these days. i've come to expect it. i'm learning to accept it. i try to find in me, whatever it is i don't see, that propels this to sky rocket. that propels this radius to expand and demand i expect nothing from anyone. surely, there's something i just don't see. i trace the lines of my face, my tired eyes, straining in the dim light of the dank bathroom bursting in color i just can't define in the dark.

rifling through the remnants of my history, recently re-emerged, i found my old favorite book. wherein i immediately supplanted myself. getting lost in the lines i've known so well. the lines i'd forgotten, but still know so well. i take breaks to scatter through old photos that no one will appreciate quite like me. and i wish there were someone to share them with. someone who could appreciate them a little like me. and i think of perfectly paned windows, in the cells of subdivisions we'll always know so well.

the week ahead is busy. and i look to the changes that will keep me busy. maraud me from myself and the focus of my fears. i take my eleven vitamins and four spoonfuls of minerals twice daily. and i see the changes that have made me even more of myself. the ways the simplicity i once sought, now reverberate to expand. i look at all those old books, back on the shelf finally, read and unread. and i want to find safety in the old. i want to reread everything i've ever read and loved. the shelter in the pages i've found home. it's hard to have faith in anything new these days. i've grown to expect it.

and i think of that first sight. that first day, preceded by so many. followed by such flames. and every succeeding scar just a burn from that first fire. from that first day. i peer through the blinds and try to see beyond it. try to see beyond the opening of a door. because the doors, they close so quickly these days. with such frequency. i trace the lines of my face the way a lover once did, trying to find whatever it is i just don't see. trying to find how he happened. how he happened to leave. and i how i came to be. how simplicity has become so hard to re-inhabit.

---

we had hardwood floors and ceilings so high we couldn't even pretend to reach them. we had a cute little kitchen, with a cute little refrigerator. and an equal sized bathroom, separated from the kitchen by a wall with a window. the hot water only lasted five minutes for every hour. luckily i was showering at 430 in the morning, bartending around the corner. he was making minimum wage down by the river in the early afternoons. we had mint green walls and a giant ceiling fan with thick, thick blades. we went out every night. and every day we walked down the loose slate walkway of pirate's alley, water swishing just below our flip flopped feet.

that's how it all started. six months in and we were still on our honeymoon. spooning to sleep and so in love. uncertain, but certainly a team. green stairs leading up to our studio apartment there on royal street. where the band played all morning. where the pigeons fucked out on our a/c unit all evening. and we were still figuring each other out; over cards and beers and out by the fountain out past the carriageway. those warm nights out in the streets aglow. laughing. before dogs and uhauls and real jobs, when life seemed like a vacation, even though we were barely scraping by. stacks of one dollar bills on the dining table i carried home from ten blocks away. things were so much easier when things were so much simpler. no morning trains or new furniture or dressing up for work. just a small studio with a few necessary things and our feet to get us around. and we never fought once. and i can't help but wonder if this simplicity is some sort of microcosm for the way we ought to be living our lives. and i can't help but wonder what would have happened if we had stayed.

but things change. time changes people. people change people. pressures mount and rise and so elevations change. they're changing all the time. people fall out of love. it just happens. prices will rise; the weather will keep getting hotter, even when it's cooling down; and we are constantly moving, even when we're barely getting by.

but the history is always there. living on somewhere. untouched and unspoiled. beignets down on decatur street with all our friends. dressed up, legs crossed, laughing at the ice cold water lady.

now he lives out of a suitcase on my living room floor. and i scope out craigslist portland with my friends. he scopes out houses around town. and i try to figure out this new relationship i've found myself in. i try to figure out this life i'm living, that i just don't seem to fit in with. and i think we're mostly happy most of the time. but i wonder what it will be like when we're living in different cities. the past spreading itself thin across the maps. what will keep us connected. hell, i still haven't really found what kept us apart. apart from things and inconsequences. all that furniture and all those commutes and all those things we thought we needed; even though we'd never needed them before.

i dress up. i tap my fingers on tables. i keep my headphones on and my eyes on the horizon. and i just don't seem to think about the way that i've been living. like i'm in some music video, where only the rhythms are consistent. where anything can happen and nothing seems so surprising anymore. where there never appears to be a set course. just me and me and pictures of the past pushing me into something new. those slate walkways, how strange they'd feel beneath our feet. moving softly, slowly. when we moved softly, slowly.

we will not make the history books. we will not be read. we will never be notarized or motorized or sold in perfect little plastic packages. we will become footnotes that fade in the paperbacks discarded on sidewalks, waiting for someone to finish them. wondering how long it will be before we just disappear softly, slowly. something that was so epic to us, something so meaningful to us, that will herald not even the slightest indentation. all those fights and notes on mirrors and mornings in bed, floating up and away, slowly, softly. so light they're barely there. up, up and away. into space and so far beyond even our reaches. the history living on so silently; in such isolation it hardly even exists.

and down here the cars will keep driving, the roads will keep traveling, the smoke will keep billowing up into the clouds, from all the windows with bars, past the barking dogs, and everyone will eventually just go crazy, crazy. slowly, softly.

---

it had been three years, crossing the country, inhabiting amazing cities and stories and faces. and when it ended, i couldn't be surrounded by the history any more. it was too painful. it was much too much. and so i sold all my belongings, filled a minivan with the dog and the essentials, and found a home in portland. in our lives, there are a handful of moments that enormously shape our futures and who we will become. portland, to me, would become the paradigm. a decision i would look back on, for years to come, with both regret and relief.

shortly after my own escape, he was shipped off to hong kong. and as i prepared and departed for my three week trip, i wondered if i would ever see him again. i wondered how the proximity would feel. to be so close, but still so isolated our history barely even existed.

a brief look at my final days before departure (part 6)

2008-10-28T12:33:00.001-07:00

i was engaged. about a month before i left for asia, i popped the question in the middle of the night. he looked at me sleepily and somewhat surprise at the impromptu proposal. as he wiped the sleep from his eyes, i asked again. and he smiled.

we'd hardly known each other. by all accounts, including our own, the engagement was insane. it didn't stop us all the same. within three weeks he'd moved in, we'd planned the entire ceremony, and sent out save the date notices. i think, even then, i knew. i knew. but hope can so easily make you overlook the obvious, the dreadful, the reality of our actions. but i firmly believe everything happens for a reason. regardless of the outcome, i knew this engagement would have an astounding effect on so many aspects of my life, past, present and future. and that so many aspects of my past, present and future would have an astounding effect on my engagement.

reconciling (part 5)

2008-10-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

i am both intelligent and informed. sometimes to my detriment. i've have spent most of my life in isolation, despite the number of great people i have been lucky enough with whom to surround myself. somewhere inside me there is a disconnect that appears constant and confusing. i am intelligent and informed enough to know what happened to me is not my fault. but i can't help but feel otherwise. the conflicts of emotion and knowledge can be so destructive. they become this mobius strip of introversion. even now there are times where i get so stuck inside my own head, i go through most of the day without realizing i haven't eaten. this has, of course, over time and since my trip, gotten better. but, still.

our days in cambodia were both fantastic and mired with a kind of suffering none of has had ever seen or dreamed of seeing. we are informed and intelligent, and it puts our own turmoils into perspective. it always will. the sights we saw we could never forget; we will never forget. and because i am intelligent i try to force my own turmoils to shrink so far down they can barely be seen or felt or heard. i've read the books, and so i know this is something we do. this is part of coping. i am intelligent and so i know life is so much bigger than me. that our individual problems are so much smaller than global pain and suffering. in the grand scheme of things, they mean nothing. how can i cry over hiv? how can i cry over so many little things, when faced with so much grief there in siem reap? but, still.

on our third day, we rode an elephant to a temple atop a hill in angkor. the views were spectacular. we marveled over the great tonle sap and the numerous temple tops rising up from the jungles below. it was impossible to look around without wanting to stay a hundred more days. it was impossible to reconcile all the pain and beauty below us. we slowly walked about the uneven rock walkways, the uprooted floor below, the carvings so intricate and precise. stories. the stories of achievement and strife and effort and time. mostly of time. how could you not feel so small, so surrounded by the evidence of time?

we could have spent another $10 a piece taking an elephant back down the hill, but opted to walk instead. the dirt trail to the ground wound back and forth across the hillside. as we made our way down, we came upon a slow and sullen huddle of people. we approached to find a young mother, barefoot and bone thin, cradling her baby. monique and i were overcome by our own tears. the boy's head easily rivaled his body in size. and from behind his eye bulged what i can only assume is a tennis ball sized tumor. his eyes were completely rolled into the back of his head. and his mother wept with such heartbreak, i felt my breath momentarily retreat from me. and all i could think was, that boy has maybe a week or two. and then what? i'll be gone. all these tourists, crying, will be gone. we'll be safely in our homes or hotels. we'll be poolside or watching television or eating out. and that woman's child will be dead. and no one will know or care. no one will ever know. and she'll be alone.

and there we found ourselves, again, returning to our hotel in silence. my own heartbreaks were suddenly so small. but, still.

we returned to the hotel, showered and changed, then headed to a nearby bar for beers and cheap eats. it felt so cold. it felt so foreign. it felt so unfair. how do we do? what were we supposed to do? what do i do now?

angkor wat (part 4)

2008-10-06T14:28:00.001-07:00

i left the doctor's office with an unsettling fear that my life would be suddenly defined by the outcome of my visit. by three letters. and it was the last thing i wanted. because while to most it would boil down to those three letters, to me it really be about how it happened. no one ever asks how. so i resolved to bury it. to push it so far away, i would never have to think about it or the night that lead to it. the night i'd vowed to forget almost exactly one year before. i immediately pulled out the brochures and charts and graphs that now defined my insides. and i crumpled them up and tossed them into the first trash can i came across. what i thought should have been empowering, only made me feel emptier on the inside. i put my headphones on, walked the 2 miles home and drank a bottle of wine. i laid, dizzy, on my bed and stared at the ceiling. i thought of the old new orleans apartment, where we used to lay beside each other and watch the ceiling fan's blades spin slowly above us. hand to hand, bodies curled together, looking up. and i couldn't help but think that had we been able to work things out, had i been better, i wouldn't have moved to portland. and if i hadn't moved to portland then that awful night would never have happened. and now... now i wouldn't be this shell of a person, trying so hard to hide from the pain. trying so hard to be numb. now i wouldn't have hiv.

it had been a dream of mine to see angkor wat for years. and now, now i was standing in its shadow. we'd been anticipating this very moment throughout the entire trip. and here we were. we were awestruck and inspired. it was the most magical place i'd ever been. it commanded thoughts of my journey to that very moment. i quietly got lost in its hallways and corridors, in its labrynthine history. i quietly got lost in my own. in all the things i'd been burying for so long. it was a peaceful sadness i still can't appropriately articulate. it was the juxtaposition of the manifestation of a years-long dream and the release of years of plight i'd refused to allow myself to feel. it was so rewarding and so sad, so all at once.

there were quick and cutting rain storms, brief views of sunshine, and so much silence there. there is something to be said for being in a such a humongous, historical, beautiful and yet so isolated place. a place filled with so much grief and pain, but still stands so tall and undeniable. it's my favourite place. hands down. you really find yourself there. whether you want to or not.

a smile (part 3)

2008-09-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

sadness is such an encompassing emotion. such an overpowering emotion. it can derail you with such ease that you can find progress to feel so hopeless. it can propel you so deep into yourself, that everything else just fades away. everything else feels fake or invisible. so, if you're like me, you bury it. you bury it and replace it with other, less debilitating emotions.

we walked the streets of downtown siem reap for most of that first day. robert and monique shopped, we ate, we had beers, we took in this strange, new place. i found myself surrounded with a sadness i could not bury, for the first time since years before. since quiet days in san francisco. since the days when my heart was so broken i felt it could never be repaired. since i learned that the only way i could overcome the overpowering, encompassing, hopeless sadness was to bury it. for years and through vast turmoils, i'd been burying it all. and now, now it was everywhere.

we'd eaten an early dinner. and much like our first meal, and every meal to follow, it was amassed in a shroud of watchful hunger. it was impossible to ignore. to deny. to escape. the truth was i didn't want to. for the first time in so long, i didn't want to see beyond the sadness and the pain. this could not be buried. it was too big. too universal. much too much. and i felt so useless. so limited. so trapped in inability. i'd spent the last week celebrating how much bang i could get for my buck in southeast asia. i'd bought extra food when i couldn't decide what to eat. i drank multiple beers and smoothies. i was living in excess. i was everything i claimed to hate here in the states. and here, all around me, was the consequence of our excesses. more starving and homeless and helpless people than not. kids selling themselves for a meal or a moment off the street. it was much too much.

i scraped my meal into a to-go box. and i found a boy. i don't remember much about his clothes, whether he wore any at all. i remember finding him, sitting alone in the dark. on a street corner. on his knees and in his own world. he was completely oblivious to everything happening around him. he was not begging. he was not crying. he was simply alone and much too young to be alone in a place that like, in a time like this. we still can't quite agree on how old he was. i say five or six. monique thinks eight or nine. all the same, any age is too young to be living that life. or barely living it at all. but the reason i don't remember what he was wearing, is the smile on his face. we caught him completely by surprise when we approached. and from what i can tell, he spoke no english. but when i handed him the box of food, i had never and have not since seen a smile like his. it was the biggest, most sincere, most breath-taking, heart-breaking smile i'll probably ever know. over a box of fucking leftovers. even in writing about it now, i get choked up. it was the pinnacle in a life-changing trip. it was what i will remember most about those three weeks. it is, hopefully, what i will remember most about my life. a moment that changed who i am as a human being.

we walked back to our hotel in silence. i could not form a word to save my life. i was ambushed by emotion. i was over-taken by the years of repressed sadness. everything amounted to that moment. and i could no longer hide from it. it was here to stay, at least, for a while. and it was such a strange sadness. it was a sadness i'd previously wanted to write about; a sadness i thought i'd understood. and it was one that suddenly had me so tight i could hardly breathe. how do you weigh personal sadness against universal pain? is it selfish to do so? is it human? is it wrong to deny our own pain in the face of greater problems with grander solutions?

for the first time i years, i was overcome. by just a smile. all this for a smile.

the fear you're glad you've had (part two of many parts)

2008-09-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

i remember sitting in the little room, alone, in respiration of the doom and gloom of what i knew was to come. people don't often make you wait in little rooms, alone, for good news. i counted months backwards on my hand. i counted back several times, and weighed in the err of testing with the time it takes to spread. and i knew. within a year, this would become the second most frightening moment of my life. but in that moment, right then and there, it was pretty on top. looking down, over the precipice of such great heights. just waiting for the inevitable push. when the door knob finally turned i looked up to find the eyes. in any silence, eyes will spell out the basics of what you need to know. and in her eyes were a deluge of words it would take me weeks to repeat. and in my eyes was the deluge she could never understand. no one ever asks how; simply what and when. the how, to me, was what i couldn't bypass. it was the murdering blow.

i was deaf to all her words. i sat, lost in the haze of all the things i could have done differently, to avoid what happened. to avoid what ultimately led me to that moment. i shouldn't have answered the phone. i shouldn't have opened the door. i shouldn't have opened that bottle of wine. i sat, deaf to her words, lost in a haze. nothing she said mattered. nothing mattered. this was the penultimate pain and devastation.

---

by my first morning in siem reap, i had been traveling for close to a week, during which time i'd been in over 4 time zones. morning was irrelevant. thank god for sunrise, which was the only gauge my body had for both time and duration. when i woke, i found myself face down in the shit-stained sheets. robert had taken up the entire (single) pillow in the twin bed we were sharing, which i'd covered with a t-shirt of mine. monique had been waking up for a few minutes as well, as now robert began to. we decided we would not shower at the guesthouse, and that we'd check out immediately. i brushed my teeth with bottled water over the sink. i washed my muddy shoes and pants in the tub, no doubt from the streets of poipet. and then we were off.

we had no plan. we'd simply walk along the river, until we found a suitable guesthouse or hotel. it was early and still fairly quiet. in comparison the poipet, siem reap was a beautiful city. despite the prior evening, i felt an immediate affinity for it. i remembered how as a teen i hated how my mother thought all of mexico was disgusting, based solely on her time in ensenada, of all places. i decided i would not let poipet have the same effect on all of cambodia. the river that runs through old town siem reap is beautiful. it's only about thirty feet wide, and lined with continuous park on both sides. bridges cross it at every other block, and trees run down its perimeter.

we walked along past several guesthouses until we came upon the ta prohm hotel. it looked nice. it looked very nice; especially after the slew of guesthouses we'd stayed in thailand and korea (all of which were very nice. but this, this was borderline fancy). since robert had been covering hotels, i didn't feel comfortable having an opinion, either way, on any lodging. whatever he wanted to do was fine by me (save for in the prior night's grim exhaustion). he looked at monique and i, looked back up at the hotel, then asked what we thought, with a smile on his face.

the hotel was gorgeous, and only $50 american per night, for a suite. the suite had 3 full beds, a sitting area, and was probably about 550 sq. ft. i was so happy to have a nice place to rest my head for the next five days, that i immediately flopped onto my bed, grinning ear to ear. we decided that it would be a good to relax. we'd hold off a day on angkor, save for a sunset visit to angkor wat. we ate breakfast at the hotel and then set of for our first venture through siem reap.

siem reap maintains a strange juxtaposition: beautiful, french colonial architecture, with lush landscapes, that happens to be lined with dirt, and full of the most impoverished people i've ever seen. we were immediately struck by the hordes of homeless. it was hot and sticky and dirty, and so we sought refuge in the indoor markets and shops and eventually tequila. we'd found a taqueria in a small alley, with the typically cheap eats and drinks.

we'd been enjoying a pitcher of margaritas for no more than five minutes, before a man approached our table from the street. he had stumps for arms, in which he carried a box of books. taped to his box of books was a sign, that read: "i lost my arms in a landmine explosion. i am not a beggar. i am a proud man providing for my family the best i can." the sign was enough to break my heart a little. we'd been aware of the landmines the united states buried through cambodia during the vietnam war. buried, then left behind. we'd read the warnings in our guidebooks, telling us to stay on marked paths when in the jungle. we knew of their presence, but were shocked to encounter their effects so quickly in. you can't help but feel guilty for the actions of our nation, our country, our home. you can't help but feel shame.

his books were all on cambodia's dark history. they told of the polpot regime and the khmer rouge, of the killing fields, of the landmines, of the genocide. they outlined the pain suffered by an entire nation, partly at our hands. and yet, somehow, he was so welcoming and friendly. it was a moving compassion i'd never experienced. you think of all the pain stupid americans brought onto middle eastern people (anyone who looked "like a terrorist") after 9/11; and here he is, welcoming us americans in with grace and dignity.

we spoke for several minutes and each bought a book from him. as he departed, a small boy wearing nothing but a filthy, long t-shirt approached us. he couldn't have been more than eight or nine, and yet alone. "hey mister," he said to robert. "where are you from?" we all replied that we were from america. he smiled.

"the united states of america has fifty states. washington, d.c. is the capital. hawaii and alaska are the newest states. the president is george w. bush." he was the cutest god damned kid on the planet. his slight grin and huge eyes. he carried a stack of postcards, which he offered to us for a dollar. as he talked to us, i watched as at least ten more children passed by. we bought his stack of postcards, for which he thanked us, and then tried to sell us another stack. we apologized profusely. and my heart just sank into my fucking stomach, as he wandered off, barefeet and alone. i thought about how rough the night before was. how us three, grown adults, barely made it one night on our own. and here was this adorable little kid, who does this, in far worse conditions, every day. every night. this existence is all he knows.

as we walked around and back to our hotel, we realized just how dire the situation was. there were homeless, starving kids everywhere. running naked, barely clothed, hungry, starving, begging. forgotten and unknown. completely forgotten and unknown. everywhere you look. everywhere. it was the penultimate pain and devastation. everything else seemed so small and insignificant. how does this exist? how had i been so ignorant? so selfish? so ungrateful? how could we just deny, deny, deny?

upon entering cambodia (part one of many parts)

2008-09-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

i was once asked what the saddest song i know is. i had no idea how truly sad the song was until i woke up in it one night.

i don't know what exactly i expected. i don't think i ever knew. what i do know is that there was no way i ever could have prepared myself for what i was about to experience. we have made a business of burying awful truths. and like landmines, they wait hidden for us to fall upon them. they wait to blow up in our faces.

we crossed from sleepy aranyapratet, thailand into poipet, cambodia late in the night; just as the border was closing. it was like walking into another world; into some war-torn movie set. we're all aware that places like this exist, but we never really anticipate actually encountering them; and are thus content to deny, deny, deny. to go about our shallow lives. to choose our battles wisely, to choose our orders wisely, to choose our words wisely. until you are suddenly speechless.

poipet, cambodia

the stars outshone the city lights, which were few and far between. the stores that lined the run-down road looked more like bombed-out shacks than buildings. there were no trees, no homes, no windows with no bars. dogs and cats and cattle roamed as stray and free as the packs of children who fell upon our entry into the city. within forty seconds they'd robbed us blind; pick-pocketed in the chaos of trying to get our visas and into cambodia in the fives minutes before the border closed. they fell upon us like landmines; because we do imbue the disasters which fall upon us. like the landmines we'd laid down there years before. buried with the denial of the devastation.

no sooner than we could shake our tot thieves were we surrounded by taxi drivers trying to snag one last fare for the night from poipet to siem reap. and they all wanted twice what the guidebooks say the trip is worth. they wanted it all up front, all in american dollars. they claimed to need it for gas. their gas tanks were empty, they said. every exchange of our debate was followed by quiet rumblings in cambodian. when a price was finally agreed upon, we were ushered into an unmarked car. there was no room in the trunk for our luggage, so we piled it upon ourselves, as we prepared for the long ride ahead. just before our car drove off into the night, a man opened our door to tell us the driver spoke no english. and with that, the door was slammed, the engine ignited, and we were off into the pitch black, barely there streets of poipet.

the road from poipet to siem reap is hardly a road at all. it erratically changes from dirt to gravel, from two lanes to one. there are no streetlamps beside it, no highway lines or street signs. the road is more pothole than pavement. the 75 miles takes 3-5 hours. and at night, you can see nothing. rumor has it that a particular airline has paid an unnamed government official to keep it this way. the road is so bumpy, only the fear keeps the nausea at bay. within the first few minutes we could tell there was something peculiar about our cab. it was unmarked, the driver had refused to ope the trunk for us to put our luggage, which was now weighing heavy upon our tired legs. we were told they needed money up front for gas, but from the passenger seat i could see that the gas tank was full. most off-putting, though, were the packages that clearly filled the linings of the seats we sat upon. they also hid beneath the floor mats in the backseat, robert had whispered to me along the way. and then we pulled off the road.

we parked beside a shack, lit by lanterns and a bonfire. our driver pantomimed that he needed to fill up the gas tank. when he shut the door behind himself, i turned around to robert and monique in the backseat. i told them the tank was full, which came us no surprise to either. we sat in silence and apparent fear for a few minutes. the driver had been gone for a while now, and we all decided it would be best to lock our doors and come up with an emergency exit, should it be needed. occasionally men would peer out at us from within the shack, and then immediately disappear back within it. a million scenarios, all with bad endings, flooded my mind. we continued to sit in silence and apparent fear, until the driver finally returned.

it had been at least ten minutes and there was nothing to speak of for his time away, save for a large, duct-taped package, which he handed to robert to hold for the duration of the drive. we knew. we were no longer frightened tourists. we were drug mules. we were drug mules, in a third world nation, in the middle of the night, in the middle of no where. it was the scariest 3 hours of my entire life. i was unsure of the outcome, only sure i probably would not survive it. and that if i did, i would hate cambodia.

we arrived in siem reap around 1am. we were exhausted, both physically and emotionally; and we had no idea where to go. our driver clearly didn't want to wait around for us to figure it out and dropped us off in a parking lot where several tuk-tuk drivers waited to lay claim on us. 'fresh, white meat, ' i thought. the tuk-tuk driver who got us knew "a great guesthouse" for us. we assumed this meant a guesthouse that would pay him a commission for delivering none-the-wiser tourists. i had previously found a handful of guesthouses in our lonely planet guide, which robert asked the driver to take us to. the driver only assured us that they would be full and the guesthouse he had in mind would be to our liking. robert demanded he take us to the first guesthouse on our short list. he agreed, but not without first expressing his disapproval. when we arrived, the guesthouse was in fact full. robert and the driver then began to debate between his guesthouse and #2 on our list, which he said would also be full.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Monique and i exchanged grimaces and decided we'd rather be ripped off once again than to drive from one closed guesthouse to the next, all night long. robert finally agreed, but not without first expressing his disapproval.

when we arrived at the suggested guesthouse, i stayed in the tuk-tuk while the other three went in to check out the room, assess the price, and decide whether it was worth rest or warranted further exhaustion. at this point, i didn't care how bad it was- i'd had to piss since aranyaprathet and could barely keep my eyes open. plus, mosquitoes were eating me alive and i had been too poor to buy malaria pills before leaving the states. and right then and there, after the arduous night, malaria seemed pretty par for the course. luckily, after ten minutes, monique emerged and waved me in. we checked in, walked up the stairs and watched as the tuk-tuk driver stayed behind to collect his commission.

the room, at first sight, appeared very nice. it was only at close inspection that we realized what a slum it actually was. dirt, mold and rust lined all the bathroom plaster and porcelain. there was no soap, nor showerhead. a sign affixed to the door warned that the hotel took no responsibility for theft, it also asked guests to refrain from bringing prostitutes, weapons or drugs in. the linens had very clearly not been washed in quite some time. the sheets had hair and smears of god-knows-what on them. it's shit, i thought. there are shit stains on these sheets.

but it was 2:30am and sleep was sleep.

a written account of home

2008-08-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

we live behind a pawn shop. people come and go, trading away their lives; selling what they need, in order to get by. getting by hasn't been so universally tough in such a long time. so now, that pawn shop, it sees a lot of action.

from the couch, i watch the cars pull in and out of its parking lot. the window framed by my bright green kitchen table (which is, incidentally, not in my kitchen) and the paper lantern that hangs above it. while in bangkok, i bought a hanging lamp with which to replace it. and while i'm a very intelligent person, i can't for the life of me figure out how to put the damn thing together. so, it sits in a pile on the bright green table, under the original lamp, waiting for someone who happens to stop by, to decide to put it together for me. people stop by all the time. it's nice.

the white-washed panel walls of our bedroom are lined with maps of all the places i have lived. points of interest highlighted, circled, summarized in my beautiful but messy hand-writing. my hands tremble, from an accident in a pool. buckley's bed sits beside ours, which is a joke, because i'm quite certain she's never actually slept in it. in all actuality, though, if she ever did, it would feel lonely in ours without her.

it was once pointed out to me that i like to bring the outdoors inside. i have birds flying across my living room wall, tree-lined 3-form hung beside the closet, big plants in every room, green patterns and framed furniture, and bird lights. even our wedding registry is full of nature themed and printed materials - serveware, artwork, bamboo. it's funny the things you never notice on your own.

our kitchen hutch always has an open bottle of wine on it. there is always coffee in the coffeemaker. and the fridge is littered with old postcards from friends, stuck with both clever and free magnets. my generations seems to have created an entire industry on the acid tongue of cleverness, sarcasm and wit. it's really undeniable. it's really everywhere we frequent. sometimes it's so jarring, we search for the sincerely fucked up, as opposed to the tongue-in-cheek.

there are books everywhere in our house. everywhere. in every room. on every surface. i value books. apart from photographs, they are the only things with which i just can't part. i value someone who cherishes the books they've read. i have, for a while now, refused to furnish my living room with a television. it seems an awful focal point. so, instead, our media cabinet is covered with lonely planet guides and my favorite novels. let's talk about books, not watch reruns of seinfeld we've seen a million times.

i say cabinet for a lack of a better word. i don't have large furniture. i hate large furniture. i like sleek, sightly, minimal and urban. i, of course, blew this to crap the other day when i acquired the biggest, comfiest, fluffy couch. now everything looks tiny. it's a bit awkward, but the couch really is so comfortable.

we have a walk-in closet, thank god. between the two of us, we could stock an entire vintage clothing store. it's excessive and disgusting; but one must be allowed their bad habits every now and again. it's so bad that, when scott first moved in, he had to immediately purchase a slew of closet organizers just so he could fit everything in our closet, which is bigger than most bathrooms. the perk is: i fit into most of his clothing, so my wardrobe just doubled.

every morning, he wakes up, walks the dog, watches the news. and then he leaves, just around the time i'm waking up to make coffee. every morning, like clockwork. we never close the blinds, so every morning we wake to the sun moreso than any alarm. mornings here are nice. we quietly go about our routines, like we've been doing it for decades.

every afternoon, buckley naps on the floor next to me, while i sit on the couch and write. she occasionally looks up, and i occasionally find myself staring off into space at that pawn shop. people come and go, trading in their lives. and we watch, creating and cementing our own life. everyone doing what they can to get by. and with the economy crashing, and getting by getting harder, i look around grateful. and i take in the surplus of huge changes that are abound. and i don't trade any of it, for all its worth.

i write and i write. i write about my trip and i write about my life. and i slowly figure it all out. and i realize that everything that has happened to me this year are the makings of something fantastic to come. i am about to sew some fucking gold.

lost in america

2008-08-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

i think all our hearts hurt a little, at least, all of the time. at least, i like to think so. it makes us more human. it makes us more understanding. and it doesn't make us any less lovely. i think it's always been this way. i mean, you rarely see a smiling statue or work of art. we, as humans, have perfected only the art of making do. any one person can only hold so much in their hands. i guess our insides are on reserve for what we're not capable of dealing with or confronting. what's not good to us now. and it wells up, makes space and takes up residency. i don't think it even makes us less happy. i think it's just what we're accustomed to, because it's always been that way.

i think what we choose to do with it is what makes us unhappy. we can use it to be better. to be stronger. to love harder, longer, more. or it can drive us crazy. we can let it destroy everything good that isn't hurting.

we all have histories; histories so evident on our skin. you just have to choose to look for them. to see them. to see what makes us us. it's the dark and dank alleyways that make us individuals. we have to allow ourselves our own histories, and we cannot deny the histories of those around us. just because you can't see something doesn't mean it isn't there; doesn't mean you can pretend it's not. we spend so much time focusing on how life affects us; it's easy to forget everybody else.

i... i don't quite know how to make do where i am, in the wake of what i've just experienced. when you are so brazenly faced with how life affects others, it becomes impossible to forget everybody else. it gets harder to see yourself. it gets harder to live in a world full of advertisements and self-absorption and mountains out of mole hills and negativity. it becomes more and more evident how so many americans thrive on negativity. as though, perhaps, they can create chaos and war and problems so that they can avoid the hurt in their own hearts.

it gets harder when you feel so surrounded by ingratitude. when you feel lost in space, like an animal in the streets, trying to make do in a world you don't understand. in a world that doesn't feel like it's yours.

i returned. and the hurt in my heart had changed. i've been so hypnotized by a pair of eyes and a smile i can never do justice. a smile over a bag of food out in the street, alone on the dirty sidewalk, with no parents or clothes or chances or choices. and now i look around and can barely see a smile for all the houses and menus and waste and work and worship and words. and it just... breaks my heart a little.

i think all our hearts hurt a little, at least, all of the time. i just wish it wasn't so easy to forget everybody else.

i feel so lost, back in america.

sofa

2008-08-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

some days you just try to do too much on your own. and as a result, get trapped inside your house, because you've gotten a couch completely lodged in your entryway.

some day, i will learn my lesson.

at least we have a couch now.

seconds

2008-08-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

we immortalize the blame. we take seconds to soothe the loss. we soothe the loss with weight. we take seconds to roll over to the blame. to the names we never knew. written in sand to wash away. we accept the tides for what they are. we take seconds and try to make it mean something. something more. we take seconds like it means something. anything at all. we take what we can get. we take as much as we can. and we run. we throw our weight around, and then we run. run away from what we can't take. from what we can't have. from who we can't be. we crawl around, weeding through the carpet, trying to find some time. more time. time to reconcile. time to rehearse the lines we think they want to hear. we try to find the endings they want to see. we try to find pieces of who we used to be. on our knees, we weed around the carpet.

i bought meals for starving children. and now, now i buy another round of beers and throw my arms back.

we immortalize the blame. we take seconds to soothe the loss. we throw our arms back. like it means something. like it means anything at all.

with all the luck we've had, why are our songs so sad? when you giggle, can i tape you?

hypermetropia

2008-08-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

i returned. i returned to a completely different life. with completely different insights. to everything changes. i was dumbfounded and shell-shocked. i am dumbfounded and shell-shocked. i just don't quite know what to say. or do. how to react or act or properly re-enact all that i've witnessed. i can't properly piece it all together; all that's happened with all that's become. everything has been rearranged, and i know longer no where to put things. where to put myself. how to put myself down. how to intersect the big picture, when the big picture just keeps getting bigger.

i woke up thursday morning, at 4:30 in gumi, korea. i woke up to a long day. to the sun barely sining over gumisan. i woke up exhausted and hungover, ready to leave, but not ready to depart. standing in the bus terminal, wrought with emotion, i quietly said my goodbyes. and for the three hour bus ride to seoul, got lost in the green and rolling hills, the rice plantations, the bridges of south korea. i got so lost in the oh so many mountains of emotions and lessons and liaisons i could never do justice, could never fully articulate, nor recount.

twenty two hours lated we landed in portland; 9:10 on thursday morning. i made the trek home, narrow-eyed and bedraggled. i arrived home to a vet appointment for ladyflaps, a doctor's appointment for myself, a live-in boyfriend, and an urgent email from my boss looming over me. shrouds to a life i'd forgotten how to live. it all seemed so real it didn't seem real at all.

when my boss finally did lay me off (over the phone) i was numb. none of it seemed to really matter to me. none of it seemed real anymore. after seeing the things and people and lives and pain and elation and progress and recess and monument i'd seen, everything here just seemed so overbuilt. overdone and rehearsed. under-felt. saccharine in replace of repair. like everything existed for the sake of having something to do, to feel, to see. no rhyme, no reason; capitalism abound and around, surrounding us everywhere we look. the problems we all face, suddenly so minute; so laughable. i didn't know how to adjust. how to see devoid of the myopia i'd been hiding behind.

i don't know what to say or do, how to act or react, how to re-enter all this. the walls seem so fake. the people seem so cold and pristine. it's been over a week and i'm still absolutely shell-shocked. i still wake from dreams of cambodia. dreams of the places and faces i have seen. unsure how to reconcile all that persists. all that consists of mere moments, taking over me. make it impossible to see beyond hypermetropia. it makes me feel so alien. so foreign. like i'm speaking another language. i can't adjust to what's in right in front of me. so great, so nice, but so different. i'm having a hard time adjusting. dumbfounded and shell-shocked.

to be loved

2008-08-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

vast figures in the background get smaller and fade from view the further along we get. i'm getting the picture, so blurry before. i'm getting to where i need to be. what's done is done, and what i have is so complete and completely sound and abound with love and life and futures that go on for miles and miles to come.

i can touch and feel and see and hear and taste the team we have become. i can get around the get around and see the big picture. it's so hard to see the big picture amongst the weeds and the reeds, blowing in the wind. any which way for whatever you've supplanted yourself in.

home is getting closer. getting closer everyday. just around the bend. for the first time in 10 months i'm no longer dying. i'm living a fantastic life that somehow snuck up on me. i'm real life.

i fly home tomorrow. so many places, so many stories fill my limbs and lips. so many faces and features embedded and indebted to.

cambodia has changed my life.

i have changed my life.

you have changed my life.

we...

abroad

2008-08-11T02:49:00.000-07:00

i have been a busy kid. 5 countries in 3 weeks busy. i'm in gumi, korea now. when i get back home this weekend, i'll tell you all about it.

did i mention i'm tired?

i'm tired.

proximity is hard to get a hold of. could you see me waving from the plane overhead? well, i was.

an apple bed

2008-07-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

i wait and i count, through the last breath we take. through the silence that overrides. if it looks like winning you haven't been, bet it all. every cent. throw it all out on the table. for all the world to see. and all our sad songs will be lullabies in no time. in no time. i wait and i count.

all our shrines to long goodbyes, waiting out the end of time. unstoppable. with pennies in our eyes, in our minds, we're asleep in an apple bed. where the trees grow wild and wide. we've got time. all the time. all the time.

good is good.

2008-07-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

good is good. no sign of evacuation, but i am both limber and capacious. good is good.

our ghosts are not cocoons

2008-07-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

my heart is hanging in my throat, making it hard to breathe. i choke on every word. clones weren't meant for us. we've always been too big for our own bodies, for our own good. we barrel down into the ground, hundreds of meters, for all the world to find in thousands of years, when life as we know it has eroded into sand. crushed by the waves of receding tides. our roots, like bones, buoyant in only the stories they have to tell. don't you see? we're immortal. immortally meager. we always knew.

love hits us like meteors, unearthing everything buried deep within. impossible to quell with the swells of bittersweet bruises of crashsites. all the ghosts of wreckage. passing through us one last time. saying goodbye, as we say hello. love hits us like meteors, and exhumes everything lost before it. lost because of it. lost in spite of it. bittersweet.

i'll bury myself in you. we'll bury our own roots into the ground. immortal, you and me. married. elated. i'm elated. my heart is hanging in my throat, so hard to breathe. elation is so haunting.

the science of sound

2008-07-02T23:43:00.000-07:00

all our footprints linger on. barely there echoes resounding the words and phrases and shouting and music we have been. and although we can't always find them, they are always there.

the forensics on our bodies can be so blinding if the science is ours. scars from guitars, cadence of chords we can't seem to navigate from. from how we couldn't imagine it to be in any other terms. even when we're long gone, the evidence will remain. souvenirs for you to frame and place upon your mantle. souvenirs for all the veneers you've barely carried yourself behind. lost amongst all the echoes of words and phrases and shouting and music.

we are scientists, but the science is against us. we are archaeologists and ultrasonographers and audiologists and seismologists. we see and hear and sense and feel the physics of love all around. it bears its weight down and barrels around in this science of sound and silence and treason.

with our gaits so heavy, all our footprints linger on. like the echoes resounding and resonating, but impossible to find or consign or resign or invite back home. yes, the footprints linger on beneath the pavements we are pounding, the mountains we have mounded and the voices we've become.

ice

2008-06-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

ice walkers must be weightless. moving, while standing still. portraits unto themselves. each step a lifetime full of cautions. so careful not to crush the thinning cadence of previous movements. each rhythm lost, of this long procession song. to which they can never look back. even the slightest shift in pressure and they're gone. under their broken paths, watching the water freeze above them. an icy heaven to the hell their sinking in. watching their mistakes, their faults, float up and away from them. so visible, so out of reach. all they can do is go numb.

they can never look back.

sometimes there are only paths of ice between what we want and who we are. land bridges to lovely things. sometimes we must move while standing still. glide in stutters.

we are intrepid. portraits unto ourselves. so capable of so much.

my god, i'm getting married. my god, love is such a lovely thing.

garden

2008-06-23T14:18:00.001-07:00

we close our eyes, sometimes, so we can walk through life. our only means to make it through the dangerous alleys we prefer not to know, remember. we beg for blindness. for ignorance.

i open my eyes to find i'm in a completely different place. greener, greater, lusher, but foreign, still. sometimes it's hard to take in beauty when it's so fresh, so new, so foreign.

lately, the skies are so grey. so still. so eerie. like nothing matters to anyone, anywhere, anymore. like we're all just waiting. i think we get used to waiting for catastrophe. we are so afraid of saying everything's great, as though it were a bad omen, with repercussions looming around some blind corner.

i wear my sunglasses, and walk quietly through the grand hall of the post office. i feel almost invisible. i feel almost numb. surrounded by so much sterilization. like we're all already dead. like we're already here.

and then i step through the doors, trying to find my way out. then i step through the doors, and it's you i think of. it's you.

sometimes it's hard to take it all in. so we find refuge in the disasters. where we're safely tainted. safely disconnected. safely away. i've spent so much time there. ruminating. hiding. studying stones. giving up.

you pull me out. you've pulled me out. and everything is so lush.

sometimes you open your eyes and you... you find your place. your home. and it may not be what you were looking for, or idealizing, or expecting. but it's yours. and it's your home. and it's everything you want once you have it. it's beautiful. it's the life you always wanted, but never knew.

want

2008-06-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

thick, hot air under a thin haze. in an altered gaze, so many things just disappear. how do we disappear? how do we lose ourselves in the seams of the stories we sew? in the glares and barely theres and late nights? in the primetime tv shows?

what is good? what is good eventually becomes good enough, if we're not careful. we avow earfuls. and forget it. the words we passionately impart so quietly disappear. in the air, thick and hot, floating away to somewhere far beyond our grasp or sight. into space, where they resonate. they resonate.

we move slowly. we find what is real is not what we've aggrandized or fantasized or have tried on for size, time and time again. we move slowly, so as not to get lost in the seams of what seems to be life finally happening, just not in the ways we happened to have believed it. zeros and ones melt away. we solidify our maybes, babies. we slide in. we feel safe. we feel slow.

what is good is good. is good enough. is here. is there. is everywhere. we make due and we make it through and love becomes us. we realize we're not who we were when we were younger. we move slower. we fold our hands. we understand. what's good is good. is grand. is more.

the air here is now thick and hot, after so much waiting. after so much waiting. after so much winter. after so much. you take me as i am. and i am good.

engage

2008-06-16T23:24:00.000-07:00

to forget. impossible. unsinkable, unspeakable truths. pearls spent and sped down drains into oblivions. barely there, but there nonetheless. imperial imprints, cemented. stones deep in our bellies. to forget is heavensent; impossible.

i sit here, between my sleeping family. and i search for ways to be better. to carry weight and to sustain. to look on and down the line. because life just multiplies. because life just got a hundred times grander. everything's beautiful. everyday a holiday. everything a hit.

and the old records play. and the needle makes a thousand miles in a turn. atoms eyes in the storm i'm barreling down. in the records i'm carrying around. in the beers we're guzzling down. when we announce. and we announce, and pronounce ourselves so well. artfully, articulately, attache.

touche! everything's as simple as we want it to be. and we want it to be. like fine wine and morning's song. moving out and on and along. down the roads we ride upon. let's ride. let's ride.

love bursts through open windows. there's nothing left to decorate. we inseminate. we emanate into imitation. impregnation. love bursts through open windows.

and i find you laying next to me. safety. i roll over and touch your face and say, 'marry me.'

and for the first time, in a long time, the whole world stops for you to say...

yes.

it's a hit

2008-06-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

summer. summer is here. and so are you. but i suppose we've been here all along. dangling our narrow feet out over the piers. dangling stories of warmer, brighter days in different places. pages ahead of ourselves. whispering sweet nothings.

love is here. and i've been making plans. places, people, words. vows. we avow to so much, so easily. we so easily pick and plot. planting big thoughts with such ease.

i smile so big. i can't even hold it in. we smile so big. they smile so big. we're all around. summer is all around. not a day too soon.

let's ride

2008-06-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

these days, the days are paramount. ticking, moving notions of what's to come. of what's on its way. so much on its way. it's hard to look back or stand still. it's hard not to look around and feel fulfilled.

i've been keeping a low profile. i've been reassessing certain values. i've been laying in bed, watching the ceiling, watching the phone, watching movies. counting down the hours in between. fantasizing. but mostly, making plans. big plans. plans for you and me.

so, let's ride. summer's on its way. everything is on its way. everything's beautiful. every day's a holiday. and the days are getting longer.

houses

2008-06-02T15:59:00.000-07:00

going home changes all the time. what is home evolves and involves so many little things. the people, the places, the way we feel in a taxi passing through. and i'm passing through. through our histories, through the faces i have seen, through the places i have been. i'm passing by, mostly waving. mostly waving.

we marry. we talk. we look around and look beyond the get around. we vow and avow and figure out how to multiply past with present, dignity with grace. our hands are tied, we tie our knots; never knowing how not to look back. how not to look back upon the trials and trails and tails we've tapped. we marry. ideas and names and lips and tongues. politely wagging in backseats and in the backs of bars and in every bated breath. in every beating step. in everything we say and do.

we look forward. we find solace. we become succinct. in nature, in nurture, in the dainty details of digressing in every feud and fuck. in both good and bad luck. in late night phone calls that age us to the bones. we get lost in dial tones. calling, falling, paling, exhaling. better. better. better. we get better at barreling through the days.

we mend. we amend. we plan and pan the scenery. never knowing. never showing even a strand of paralyzing fear. instead we stand firm on what we're made of. we make of each other all we're worth. going home changes all the time. we're changing all the time. never saying it's too late. never saying it's too much. never saying much of anything more than i love you, i love you. i love you. we go home. we make due. we make up the makings of something bigger. something more. the sum of all the parts. we retrace our steps. we unearth emotions and memories. we exhume, recount, rebury. we marry.

reasonable dives

2008-05-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

sometimes you have to let yourself fall. you have to let go of everything you cling so tightly to in order to feel that free fall. in order to feel anything, at all. and sometimes, every so often, you even re-emerge better than you were before. you are free, if only for a little while. if only for the fall. you are free.

i'd found a blood blister on my chest, which no doubt had caused some strange skin discolorations i'd previously noticed. so i took a small knife to it and let the blood burst through. i found myself mesmerized by the rush of the blood, dripping down my torso. fascinated by the way the oxygen purifies it. kills the disease. i stared at it there, on my chest, on my fingertips; so vital. so strange.

i find myself free falling lately. falling away from the frictions and failures. my arms outstretched. my eyes closed. neither full of hope nor anticipation. simply feeling the fall. feeling the lightness. re-learning to breathe. sometimes it seems so hard to exhale. so hard to let go. so hard to just exist.

sometimes you have to let go and do what you might otherwise consider foolish or dangerous. sometimes what you might consider too terribly brave. you have to let go of everything you cling so tightly to. in order to fall. in order to feel anything at all.

don't look up. don't look down. just close your eyes. close your eyes and feel light. love will find its way. you will find your way. you will re-emerge, sometimes better than before. it is the reasonable dives from which we survive. we cannot survive the falls we never fell. we cannot survive until we allow ourselves to fall. until then, we're only traveling through - vagabonds. rootless. barely there.

meet me beneath the overhang

2008-05-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

the weather here has been so unpredictable. we weather it with such grace. we run down burnside, beneath the lightning storm that's taken us by surprise. we run through the trivialities that just quietly subside. because we know what we want. and where we're going. and exactly what to do, for the first time, in a long time. we exhale.

and when the heat surges in, we roll up our jeans and roll down the windows and just drive. under the blanket of trees that is this city. along the river. out of our fragile minds. and we like it. we like it all, no matter, no mind. we've come to expect never knowing what to expect. so we cast and cast aside. we re-mold and re-fold and unfurl our fears, like a red carpet to step out upon, and walk upon, and smile on.

i, as always, tap my feet to the beats. i look up. i sip slowly. i unfold my arms. i crack my knuckles, out of habit. i step out into the elements. i look up to you, and quietly say hello. we glow, like afterthoughts now that we've finally got it right. and when the rain stings our sunburns, we find it so delightfully strange. so rightfully fit. so rightfully so.

i feel like i finally have it right again.

terms of measurement

2008-05-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

some terms of measurement are too small to weigh our histories. the feelings that build up over time. the time it takes to completely understand these feelings. sometimes galaxies are too small.

i find myself doing a lot of counting these days. counting down, counting up, counting out everything i have and have coming and have been. sometimes it's near impossible to see beyond the tally marks. too see beyond the miles now behind us. to see anything any better coming up upon us. horizons are such blurry lines. like mirages, mired by the burning sun. you divert your eyes to something easier to see. we strain to make the most of where we've been, so the future isn't so bad for business. so worrisome. so wearying.

our hearts speed up and slow down, moving of their own volition. to protect us. to resurrect us. to cool us down and heat us up. its only in feeling our hearts might just explode that we ever realize this. it's frightening; when you put your hand to your heart, you can actually feel it beating. you can feel your life. the basis of your existence. the circumference of every ache and joy and pain you've ever experienced. right there, beneath your unsteady hand. you can count the beats. you can feel the speed. and make of it what you will.

today i woke up with a sore throat. today i woke up utterly exhausted. from tossing and turning and palpitations and murmurs. i woke up completely spellbound. we try to find reasons. meaning to the events that have unfolded. we try to make sense of everything that has and has failed to occur. we try to negotiate happenstance. we try to measure out the incongruencies of our plans and reality. we try to live up to our follies.

i'm supposed to be on my way to mexico right now. i was supposed to be a lot of things that i wasn't. there is no accurate way to measure all that has passed and will be and might have been. no way to measure the distance from here to there and back again; of all the places we might have been and somehow are. no way to measure the gallons of blood my heart has pumped, by nature, for protection, in my own inabilities. there is no way to place the exact time and location that blood changed. no device to indicate when it stopped saving me and started hurting me. there aren't enough galaxies to measure the moments that come and go and change us and our lives. that change the routes we take and the people we become.

i find myself doing a lot of counting these days. for balance. for self-assurance. for peace. perhaps to assure i can measure and, thus, control some faucet of my existence. i count the boats and the birds, as i cross the bridges in the quiet of morning. i count the steps from one place to another. i count the days, as they slide from the calendar; like ice in this summer sun. sparkling and shining, but silently disappearing into puddles at our feet. and then evaporating away. out of grasp. out of reach. nothing to no one.

i count the beats of my heart, to measure the murky waters of my emotions. i imagine the slaving ships sailing around, trying to find a safe place to tie down. to tie us down. to take us in. out and into the blurry horizons ahead. our hands clasped to unsinkable memories. clasped to hardened realities. to all that we cannot change nor control. to all that surrounds us, so carelessly.

i was supposed to be on my way. i was supposed to be a lot of things. but the courses have changed and our ships have sailed. i quietly count them as i cross the bridges in the early morning sun. before it shines too bright to be seen. somewhere they'll be arriving soon. and i'll be here, counting down the days. counting the days away. counting the ways we've outnumbered ourselves. even though there are no terms of measurement great enough to measure us up.

and we'll say it was good

2008-05-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

the cool winds are receding. the flowers are in bloom. the cars, they slow. they slow down, like a show. on parade. past the platforms full of people, waiting for their trains. waiting with the ranks, with their balloons floating so high. full of strange mechanics. full of hope.

we baptize ourselves in showers of sun. reborn for the better days ahead. reborn for the faces out amongst us. reborn for the surprises we know are coming. around the bend. around the corner of this barely there spring. around the sharp edges eroding into smooth curves for you to run your fingers along.

you wait. and we wait. and we wish less and less. we are full of strange mechanics. cranks and levers, disregarding executions and expirations and exhalations. oiled up with hope. the hope we will learn to love or hate. the hope we will dismiss or disassemble or display with our hearts on our sleeves.; rolled up, arms bare, full of curves for fingers.

we see it happening as though its already happened a million times before. we know it by heart before its begun. it clings to us. it shapes us. it parades us around through the light. the days get longer and we anticipate the late nights. we find comfort there, as though its already been in us for centuries. waiting, wondering, full of hope.

and we'll say it was good, while we wait for it to come.

we slow down, like a show. on parade for every passing glance. balloons up high above our heads. mercy is infinite and we are full of hope. because we know: it was good. it was good, good, good.

oil spills

2008-05-07T14:17:00.000-07:00

low lights. a slick of oil. we vanish, like echoes. reaching out and wasting away. the belfries of bodies bursting in the collapsible curiosities of collisions. late night fires shutting down streets. leaving only dark alleys with glistening oil stains. their dirty little spills we step across. running along the overgrown vacant lots, lost in the bustle of emergency and avenue. like echoes. carrying on so quietly, until there's nothing left but a slick of oil under the high lights of dawn. and the ringing of bells barreling down in the distance.

recklessly/restlessly/relentlessly

2008-05-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

the shot glass on the counter is full only of indication of the direction we are heading.

my blood is thinned by coffee, alcohol. aspirin. it soothes through me so smoothly. i tap my fingers. i tap my feet. i look up. to the trains. to the sky. to the flights ahead. the flights ahead.

i walk along the wooden boardwalk of tanner springs and jamison square. i unintentionally strut. i unintentionally notice everything. the passers-by, the quiet sighs, the way the buildings burst into the sky. like eruptions of butterflies. like the coming eruption of last night's drinks. like you throttling through the motions we go through. in and out. ebb and flow. knowing and unknown. i know.

at least, i used to. lately i'm not so compelled to anymore. i'm happy just to do my thing, look up and wait for whatever's on its way. rolling down the streets we careen. recklessly/restlessly/ relentlessly. i'm not asking for much these days. i won't ask for much. i have enough. for now. for what it's worth. to fill my hands and head.

or, at least, fill my hands instead of my head.

emerge

2008-04-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

the skin of worn lovers feels so differently than the rest. even years after the sex has gone dormant, you can still feel it in a handshake or hug. it ignites in us old fires, if only for a second or two. it's both magnetizing and mesmerizing. we are jolted into old equations, whether their sums ever did measure up right.

it's hard to decipher between love and lust. sometimes near impossible. sometimes it takes years. lifetimes. sometimes we may never know. we spend so much time trying to reconcile. trying to concede. trying to wade through the murky waters of emotion and devotion, through the currents rushing through us every time we say hello. every time we touch.

we wait. we wait it out. we wait to see whether time will resolve our uncertainties. and we wonder if when it does it will be too late. too late to change, too late to speak up, too late to hold tight to what we love.

the skin of worn lovers exists far beyond the lengths any hand can reach. it may be dormant, but never dead. waiting to erupt; like cum, like words, like emotions and devotions. love and lust. rolling and unrolling. every time we say hello.

under dim lights and in cool breezes and out in the streets, i see you. and you say hello.

anti-faradic

2008-04-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

my new bathtub is huge. in the absence of a plug, i duct taped the drain last night, poured myself and glass of wine, and sank into the glory that is my life right now. things have gone from so ridiculously bad to elation. i am the happiest i've been since moving to portland. i've made difficult decisions to eliminate the unnecessary stresses in my life, and am starting to yield the benefits of doing so.

i have been doing my own thing, for the first time in a while. i'm not dating anyone, i haven't had sex in over 2 months, i'm spending more time on my own. i'm letting other people plan outings. it's a pleasant change of pace. i've been reconnecting with old friends. and everything is just so nice. i feel really at peace for the first time in a long time.

beat

2008-04-23T08:10:00.001-07:00

we are always looking for a fight. we invent diseases, so we can fight for their cures. we imbue war, so we can fight for peace. we're always looking for someone or something to beat. beat. beat.

not me. not now. i've got running shoes for the occasion. for the occasional fight that comes my way. i lock the doors. and when you come pounding on them. beat. beat. beat. i run. i don't invite chaos in anymore. i'm not looking for a fight.

i'm looking for someone to play records with. to sip morning coffee. i'm looking for high ceilings and hardwood floors, with rugs we can lay our bodies upon. we can laugh and roll around like cats and kids. why fight, when you can laugh and roll around like cats and kids.

i kind of think i have us beat.

koi

2008-04-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

koi swim in circles, never knowing how beautiful they are. they know their places though. never too big, never too small. through nature, the find a way to make everything fit. so we can sit and stare at their peaceful beauty. so we can marvel at how easy it is. to swim in circles, so serenely. so unaware.

i walk the planks out by the ponds. it's so pretty here it's a joke. and i'm not laughing. instead i'm mesmerized by the circles being swum. the circles being spun by all the things we say. what we choose not to say, over and over again. over and over again.

we manufacture black bottoms. so, as though, they never existed at all. they mask the depth of the shallow pools. those shallow pools we find ourselves in. the shallow pools i've found you in. swimming. just swimming, so serenely. like art. or architecture, with no lines or boundaries. no borders no floors. just you and the space you surround yourself with. the space you get lost in. the places i get lost, when i'm lost in you. i get so lost in you.

koi swim in circles, never knowing how beautiful they are. we sit and stare, as they swim in circles, so serenely. so unaware. architecture with no lines. just you and me and the space we surround ourselves with. just you and me.

TRAINS

2008-04-18T16:42:00.001-07:00

i spend so much time in the past, i often have a difficult time living in the present. this is bad for business. it's bad for the big, beautiful bruises nestling gently into me. from the office i watch the high rises under construction rise higher and higher. i watch the gulls take claim to the river below them. most of all, i watch the trains go sailing by. the roar of the tracks. the blare of the horn. god, i love trains. i get lost in all those trains.

the fall of the world's own optimist

2008-04-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

don't you know, there is no modern romance.

like i said, bad news.

fear and convenience. it all just seems to be fear and convenience.

don't you know, there is no modern romance.

fake empire

2008-04-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

somedays it feels like we're just pretending. barely floating through the streets, buried in these shiny cities. in these empires so everlong. evergrasping. everywhere.

somedays we're all just bad news. ballads filling up the air between us. cordially corralling around us. smothering us to smithereens. it's times like these i never know just what to say. i never have to say a lot to decimate the planks i sometimes find myself walking upon.

the worst news is when we both know i won't be seeing you. plans can account for nothing. plans; they never work out the way we map them to. i don't think it's a lesson i'll ever fully grasp. my plans still include you. but i'm deluded and overwhelmed by it. fingerprints in folders, we record our histories so daily.

somedays it feels like we're just pretending. especially in this thin, cold air.

i am happy, but unresolved. aren't we all?

looking, still.

2008-04-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

i wrote this in june of 2005. it's not something that stood out to me; something i'd even remembered until reading it just now. i've spent the majority of the evening re-reading my history recorded so casually. blogs. scary, horrible, amazing things. everything i've experienced in the last 7 years, recorded, published for everyone to see. to judge. to remember. the pains and pleasures. for so long. everything. mostly it boils down to 3 years, though. sometimes it seems to all boil down to those three years. anyhow...

LOOKING

long train rides. tracks disappearing under the weight of our travels. under actions and inactions. becoming more of a serpentine trail. a serpentine tale. shattering from behind us. long train rides. that, when i look back on, i don't remember being so long. so bad. overpaying for cheap struggles, like bad wine. bottles collecting dust, waiting to be drunk. to get us drunk. rattling on the tracks. tracks of tears. those tears which never really belonged to us. tunnels leaving us momentarily blind. tunnel vision.

playing cards to pass the time, as time passes by, lost amongst the flash of scenery out those tiny windows. all glare from the bright white lights, which we would use to keep score, if scores were worth being kept. but somehow, someone's always keeping score. penciled additions and subtractions meant to define a segment in our lives. something someone shouldn't have said or done. the cards we shouldn't have laid down. the stops we missed during long overdue sleep. just waiting to wake up somewhere new.

the terrain has changed, but the train just stays the same. and when i look back, it never feels long. it never feels bad. just overpriced.

barrelling down these tracks to somewhere. 100 miles per hour. if i could make you happy.

long plane rides. looking out over the wing. wishing. thinking. looking.

i know

2008-04-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

sometimes there's just too much time. too much time to think, to remember, to drink the coffee i shouldn't be drinking, to re-read the emails we've sent. time, like people, can be so haunting. can linger in the air. like a song, or a smell, and leave us helpless. can leave us wondering about all the time we've lost. the time we can't get back. the time that made places so great. the times that made us who we are. god, it lingers.

i fell in love once. and nothing has been the same since. and the time just lingers.

i think we're already dead

2008-04-08T19:09:00.001-07:00

six months. time moves so quickly, with so many casualties. so casually. it's been six months since the waiting room, and the long walk home, and the everlasting calculations and equation that came to be. the low moments are fewer and further between still.

i've been working. the new job is fine. as fine as any new job can be. fine enough to get me through and by and into my own apartment. it's just time. it's time. i need to spend some time alone. living alone. surviving alone. by july.

on my walk back to the office today, i thought about all that i've accomplished in my life so far. it made me feel better about the way things have stood. it made me feel like less of a fuck up and more of an adult than i allow myself to most times. i've done a lot. i've accomplished a lot. i've made it through a lot, headstrong, shoulders back, eyes up.

owl waltz

2008-03-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

motions. walking, sleeping dogs, conversations, frustrations. waking up can still sometimes be such a chore. so foreign. like waking up to outer space. there are so many new faces. and for as long as i've now known them, they're all still so new. everything is always still so new. like it's a really long vacation. as though there are mustard cabinets and world class views waiting for me. sticky notes on bathroom mirrors. hair cuts. sushi pyramids and the best god damn riesling on the planet. motions. waltzes to old and ingrained songs. i go waltzing through the days. waltzing the days away. and i can't help but sometimes feel there's magic in the air somewhere. hiding. going through the motions. floating above us. flying and fluttering around. like hundreds of sparrows. sometimes i get lost just looking up. trying to see it. i get so lost. like waking up to outer space. everything is always still so new. i go waltzing through the days to old and ingrained songs. waltzing the days away.

please bring more yellow birds.

dirtywhirl.

2008-03-28T22:21:00.000-07:00

sometimes you get so mired in the marring of the marrow of all that you deem worthy. sometimes you grant so little mercy. maybe to see what can be salvaged from the dirty work of your hands. to see what's strong enough to survive. the pitfalls. the pricey porcelain. the ettarre you wear yourself in. you're so tarred and tiresome, wearing your scrapes and scars to hide who you are. wearing your scrapes and scars to hide. you've scraped and scavenged enough to know. you should know. you should know.

we build impenetrable walls to protect ourselves. we enroll empires of emperors to defend us. and then we wonder why no one's ever knocking on our doors. sometimes we get so mired in the marring of the marrow, as though it could protect us from the damage already done. when in fact, it only damages us itself.

sometimes what's in the past needs to stay there, in order to make the most of what's to come. in order to be better.

i'm not there

2008-03-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

i hate going to gay bars. this statement has made me sound like a self-hating, indignant, snob for a long time now. people will ask why, and i'll give them the answers they want. and sometimes, most of them are true. i do hate homogeneity. i do feel like gay bars are the adult equivalent of high school cafeterias. but the real reason is much harder to articulate in conversation. sometimes it's so hard to be easy.

i have a hard time with objectification. i have a hard time when people say i'm pretty or sexy or hot or handsome. i think, for me, it's because the two worst things to ever happen to me, happened because men thought i was pretty or sexy or hot or handsome. or whatever word you want to use. a pretty piece of meat.

as a child, i was molested for years. and for years, i felt like a total lunatic. i didn't trust anyone. i didn't know how to make and maintain relationships. i couldn't relate to people. and being alone with a group of men was the scariest thing in the world to me. hell, sometimes it still is.

as an adult, i was date raped and given hiv, as a result. the whole time it was happening, he kept telling me how sexy i was. so it's hard to feel good about feeling sexy. it's hard not to cringe when you hear the word.

and so, i hate going to gay bars. places where you're surrounded by men, looking for a pretty piece of meat. looking. ready to pounce. it makes my skin crawl, even though i know it's not quite so nefarious.

they make me feel like a ghost. an apparition, with no name or story or history. like i'm there, but i'm not.

hands of hammers

2008-03-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

torture is so easy to debate. like love. funny, it is. we use one to cope with the other. we head our own telethons, collecting caches of each. something good to rely on, when the goods are going, going, gone. hands of hammers, to nail us in. torture is so easy to debate.

we know ourselves so well. we've known ourselves for so long, and longer still. still sitting, wondering what we could have done, what we've done so wrong, why we couldn't get it right. we face and then erase long lines of logic, we can't afford. we can't afford the faces we replace. we can't afford the mistakes we've made. we try to change, we try to rearrange the events that led us to where we stand, we find ourselves feeling so deranged over the impossible prospect of finding what's already been found. what's already been ingrained. what we've already failed to replace.

we crowd surf off our cliffs. it's all fun. and it's all well and good, when the goods are going, going, gone. love is so easy to debate. like torture. funny, it is. we use one to escape the other. telethons. the lines are ringing. but no one's home. we're all going, going, gone. free to the highest bidder. long lines of logic we bid adieu. long lines of logic we do imbue and debate. confiscated by what is easiest to a free home. to the highest bidder.

we never know when to compromise. we never know if it's us. our faults. if it's our fault. what is free. what is easy. apart from humility. passers-by. crucifixion. fiction. memory. every inch of the long lines we deny.

compromise is so easy to debate. like ourselves. like love. like all the stupid things we've said and done. i've got a cache of each. something to rely on. torture is so easy to debate.

mostly waving

2008-03-23T13:08:00.001-07:00

missteps. rain in showers. late night conversations. over drinks. over coffee. over ourselves. we get over ourselves. we get over what we've been so under. the blues are brown now. and we're mostly waving. we skinny ourselves down, to marginalizations of martyrs mired in the memories we try so hard to forget. we skinny ourselves down for the sake of persistence. for the sake of existing for more than pennies lost in inflation. lost in piles and piles of bigger, brighter, shinier. lost in what is easier to hold. missteps. rain in showers. late night conversations. and we're mostly waving.

i am here

2008-03-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

it was a rough winter. by which i mean, the weather was mild, and still we found ourselves so weathered. for the worst. for the dregs. for the ice we walked upon. i found myself unrecognizable. unsure. unsteady. and at times, unhinged. but really, is there ever a right way to handle anything? when we find ourselves falling, we put our hands out as quickly as we can. it's human nature. i often wonder if i made myself so unrecognizable so that it would seem it wasn't actually me who was holding the hand i was dealt. this is not my life. i don't do these things. i often found it a struggle not to alienate myself. not to push people away. not to lock the door and pull the blinds.

i sought distractions. i threw myself deeply into anything that wasn't rape or hiv or firings or break-ups. i was obsessed with avoidance. but it gets better. it's getting better all the time. i re-read the books i read. i quiet my nerves. i sleep when i ought to. i anchor myself. sometimes all we really need is an anchor. half an hour. to see the ways we've so severely fucked up. to let the tornado run its course. to let human nature run its course.

i tried to replace apples with oranges. because there was one person who could make it all better. there was one person i actually yearned for. yearned to fix it with the simplicity only he knows. to deal me a hand of my own. i realized while on a date, of all places, that we've almost been broken up for as long as we were together. three years is a really long way to go. i sat there evidenced in my own surprise and sadness. trying to recover my fumble. trying to recover the dinner lost to memories and photography and holidays and the fights. the hell that was a good life. and you wonder, how long does it take? how long does it resonate? should this still linger so strongly? should i still be here? i still have a difficult time grasping what's not permanent. it's not permanent. we're all on loan. we're all alone, in one way or another. love and in love and the best of intentions don't change it. don't rearrange it. don't make it easier to sell or harder to buy.

you realize, you do not exist in songs or cards or longing. that you are here. you are here. wherever and however that may be. however far the miles intercept.

i have a job now. i have an appointment with a case worker. i have pork chops and inhibitions and magazines and remote controls and songs and all the things i've always had. the foggy vapors don't change the reality, they just make it harder to see. it just gets so hard to see when we scoop up each other's stars. when we close our eyes to truth. when we lock the doors and pull the blinds.

i am not in songs or fights or refugee camps or dockets or stories or heartbeats hidden in pillows. i am here. here.

spoons

2008-03-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

in the bars, parsonages unto themselves, we undo ourselves. well whiskey weathered for the worst. for the submersible task of being human. of having relived renewals time and time again. of having stories surround us. we drink along the intersection of multiple lines on a singular plane. the intersections whereupon various crash sites have been memorialized, serialized and put to rest. put upon us to be forgotten. bones more like bottles, to drown into the obscurity of long, late nights. we try to abate. but the penance of persistence of memory, has us drunk driving, careening in and out of our emotions and placations. in and out of all the things we try not to say. the clumsy shuffling of words so ingrained in us, their meaning is completely lost. words that simply become idols of failure. it never comes out right. a kiss is just a kiss. and most of the time we can't even recall what we're missing so badly. or it's the sublime second lost amongst months of torture.

in the bars, parsonages unto themselves, we undo one another. tattering our own sails, and worse off, others'. so easily blown off course. it's easy to ignore how fragile we really are. i fell in love once. and i've been digging at the walls with spoons trying to get out.

funhouse mirrors

2008-03-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

howdy with every ounce of dignity. it's tricky to stand tall while you're still on your knees...

life has been odd this past week. low key, but eventful. slow, but eventual. i'm figuring things out. i'm getting it straight. i'm worrying less and less about making sure others have fun. ultimately, it's not my responsibility. it's my responsibility to be nice and respectful, not an activities director. or a pimp. if you have the option to be right or nice, be nice. being smarter or hipper or prettier just doesn't compete with being nicer. if there was a moral to this last week, that was it. sometimes you see the parts of yourself you don't care for reflected and exaggerated in others; and it's such an amazing lesson. point of reference.

last night a handful of us went to east end's 70's yacht party. let me just say: best.portland.event.ever. i can't wait for next month's.

bingo tonight. i feel good. but i still miss him. everyday. and i don't hate it so much anymore. it just is. it's being human. it's just all right. it is what it is. everyday. and when i make jokes, they all know. they all know. last night, in the east end shanghai tunnels, with my rocket man sunglasses on, i thought i saw him. my heart fell to the floor faster than my head could grasp the reality of it. it took me by surprise. it just is. and it's okay.

succinct

2008-02-27T23:39:00.000-08:00

interviews, scrambling, tally marks. quiet lines. from your mouth. from mine. quiet lines. connecting, dividing, creating boundaries. quiet lines from which we hang, brightly. like explosions in the sky, in tiny dioramas, made of shoe boxes. suiting we should exist where so many people have dug their heels.

just as always, i get more than most, but never enough to satisfy my craving to get it all. to understand. to get around the get around and get to the point. the point which has stuck me, like a pig, over the fire. burning in rotations, in slow motion. so slowly, it feels good. so slowly. like love. and before you know it, your insides have spilled out over the table for all to see and rifle through.

it's not even necessarily a bad thing. it just is. we're not necessarily a bad thing. we just are. were. hanging brightly, from quiet lines, in tiny dioramas. succinct.

spring is here. people shed their many layers. i shed my many layers. and it feels good. it feels good to feel so light again. to hide my face behind sunglasses, and look out at the life that surrounds me. i open my eyes, looking up, i stretch my arms out to the sheets beside me. i open the blinds and let the sun shine in.

it's such a small town. we see people. all the time. we see people we pretend not to. we find ourselves disheveled, crossing a lamp-lit street, eyes on the sidewalk. it's such a small town. we see people. all the time. people we've never met, from places we patron. and we wonder when we'll finally meet them. or if we'll keep running into the people we've met. if we'll finally stop pretending not to see them. if we'll fall into each other like the lovers we were. like the lovers we never were. it's such a small world. quiet lines oh so everywhere, connecting tiny dioramas around a classroom. all these little people looking out, being seen.

and we think of the people we want to see. the things we want. the quiet lines we hope to speak. succinct.

solute

2008-02-25T23:40:00.000-08:00

i am barefeet on hardwood floors, eyes locked on ceiling fan blades, exhales for the sails of ships, coffee brewing carelessly, singing along so quietly. i am looking up from the ditch i kicked up from the dust. i am looking up, with my hands tucked neatly into my pockets. in my subtle way. i explode in silence, in my subtle ways. you won't forget. you won't forget me. you'll try to get me.

i have a strong sense of self. i am always eying the lines. balancing upon them. stumbling in and out. stumbling defiantly, definitely, through the deontology of day to day. i do what i can. i make do. i make the most of what i can do, when i can. and what i want the most, is to lay and laugh in bed. to look up from the covers we've uncovered, and find our smiles beaming back down onto us. perfection only exists in dreams and moments. i've become a connoisseur and collector of them both. i pull them out of the air and tuck them in beside me. beside you. beside us.

i want to learn and love and learn from love and love to learn. i want homemade french toast. i want to do the crossword, while you read the paper. i want neat lines in static houses where we scream only above the roar of love and life. organically and orgasmically.

i know who i am. i found myself derailed. but i know who i am. i look up from the bed to the spinning of blades. the rotations we become. the rotations we've become. my arms outstretched. and i smile. i gave myself some time to be stupid. we all need some time to be stupid. you just need to know when to sober up. before it's too late. before you're looking down, digging around, while the dust settles around you.

i am barefeet on hardwood floors and ready for long baths. and i'll try to get you. i'm always trying to get you.

partisans of perpetuance

2008-02-22T14:06:00.000-08:00

we get so stuck. in our fears. we see them everywhere, whether they're present or not. we're always looking for the opportunity to run from them. we're always on the run.

futures

2008-02-21T01:21:00.000-08:00

sometimes i feel like i'm going to be alone for the rest of my life. and it doesn't matter why or how or when or where. the whys and hows and history don't change the result. i think, maybe, some people are just meant for it. maybe we're just damaged goods. lessons to be learned. and i'm just trying to learn to be okay with that.
it's the hope that makes it so hard. i think most of us feel this way. half of us settle. and half of us find love, but are so afraid of it, we run away in fear, and spend the rest of our lives regretting it. and i'm just trying to learn to be okay with this. or maybe there's just something wrong with me that i'm not seeing.

ionize

2008-02-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

the first thing i ever saw was the opening of a car door, through a perfectly paned window, in a cell in a subdivision, in the autumn of the desert. everything that came after or before was simply a reverberation of this moment. of this first sight. of this first memory. the rings of a rock, dropped and drowning, in the stillness of the waters that surrounds us. life doesn't happen in any particular order. calendars pale in comparison to the values and the verdicts. time doesn't happen in any particular order. my past, present and future all started then. that day. peering through the shutter blades.

now and again i find myself peering out through blinds i've hung around myself. trying to find a familiar sight. trying to find a way to the door. people come and go, with greater frequency these days. i've come to expect it. i'm learning to accept it. i try to find in me, whatever it is i don't see, that propels this to sky rocket. that propels this radius to expand and demand i expect nothing from anyone. surely, there's something i just don't see. i trace the lines of my face, my tired eyes, straining in the dim light of the dank bathroom bursting in color i just can't define in the dark.

rifling through the remnants of my history, recently re-emerged, i found my old favorite book. wherein i immediately supplanted myself. getting lost in the lines i've known so well. the lines i'd forgotten, but still know so well. i take breaks to scatter through old photos that no one will appreciate quite like me. and i wish there were someone to share them with. someone who could appreciate them a little like me. and i think of perfectly paned windows, in the cells of subdivisions we'll always know so well.

the week ahead is busy. and i look to the changes that will keep me busy. maraud me from myself and the focus of my fears. i take my eleven vitamins and four spoonfuls of minerals twice daily. and i see the changes that have made me even more of myself. the ways the simplicity i once sought, now reverberate to expand. i look at all those old books, back on the shelf finally, read and unread. and i want to find safety in the old. i want to reread everything i've ever read and loved. the shelter in the pages i've found home. it's hard to have faith in anything new these days. i've grown to expect it.

and i think of that first sight. that first day, preceded by so many. followed by such flames. and every succeeding scar just a burn from that first fire. from that first day. i peer through the blinds and try to see beyond it. try to see beyond the opening of a door. because the doors, they close so quickly these days. with such frequency. i trace the lines of my face the way a lover once did, trying to find whatever it is i just don't see. trying to find how he happened. how he happened to leave. and i how i came to be. how simplicity has become so hard to re-inhabit.

houses of leaves / hi, how are you?

2008-02-03T00:36:00.000-08:00

in everything we witness, we look for explanations. even in our hands. manuals or reasoning. definitions. lines within which to bind ourselves.

and in the back rooms of dark bars we try to find the faces we've forgotten. ways to forge through the discrepancies we're facing. to forge through the feeling that we are all just really alone. but i know isolation well. well enough to know better.

we surround ourselves with faces. faces to witness all that grounds us. proof. pictures. lines within which to bind ourselves. so we know what's happened has really happened. so we don't have to search so hard for the explanations that get us through our days. the days in which we find ourselves alone, in bed, trying to make sense of the messes just before us. so we can say, 'hey, remember when?' as though we're trying to find the comfort in a moment long-passed. when really, we just want the comfort of knowing it actually happened, we were actually there, and that it was before we found ourselves alone, in bed, trying to make sense of the messes just before us.

we never know how to say the things we need to say. so we make the most of our actions and inactions. we make the most of our reactions. we fashion ourselves unwritten clauses, unspeakable truths we know we can never serve. we secure lines of translation, to travel across, arms outstretched. where we feel our ways around gravity, as though through the dark alleys of the ghettos of our hearts. we never know how to feel the things we need to feel. in everything we witness, we look for explanations. placations. vacations. quick fixes to get us through the messes we find just before us. we're always looking. as though through the dark, for that light to lead us into safety. the safety of knowing everything is as we hope it is. as we believe it to be.

and so it starts...

2008-02-01T15:05:00.000-08:00

as i walked down davis, hands full of groceries, a stranger stopped me on the street and said i was beautiful. he then offered to help me carry a bag.

i think 2008 will be the year i learn from my mistakes, my many many mistakes of 2007. the year i re-learn how to be alone. the year i stop looking and start waiting. i've always been an impatient person, so this ought to do me some good.

of course, i did just get my ticket to korea emailed to me. this is... i can't believe it's real. i finally have something to hold on to. it's been so long since i've had much of anything to hold on to.

colette flies into town in less than a week. mostly to save me from myself and the minor freak-out i had last week. you know those moments when everything you've been trying to conceal under optimism catches up to you? i was so hell-bent on not moping, on being strong that in doing so i refused to let myself really deal with what had happened. a person doesn't just smile away contracting hiv from a date rape. nor do they just grin and bear a break-up with the first person they've actually, really loved in over 2 years. so, colette is coming to make sure i get it together and let myself be weak and deal appropriately. she's also coming to fix things and make me laugh.

eric arrives the same day, to look for a life here. and i have to say, it'll be really nice to have another sf transplant here. someone who knows me and my history. and yes, i'm aware of how selfish that sounds, but 2008 is also the year i let myself be selfish and let others help and do things for me. even though, i think it was purely selfishness that led me to believe in frank. such a fine line.

and for now, i'll obsess over my way-too-far-away trip, eat well, hang low, save money, let people come to me and make plans, and talk with robert. he showed up at the perfect time. and timing is everything.

photobooth

2008-01-26T15:22:00.000-08:00

all the different faces we make, frozen by each frame. all the different faces, stilled and still the same. i kissed you once, and in a flash it became permanent. nothing and no one is permanent. but still. still.

we fall out through the curtains, into the fall-out of all that surrounds us. still moving, beating, breathing. we are still moving, beating, breathing. instilled in the stills of a moment long lost on us. permanent. permanently upon us. frozen in space, a transmission looped. in this game of satellite, we circle around. permanent. nothing and no one is permanent. but we are instilled in the still of a moment.

i kissed you once.