Echo

a post honoring the spirit of the olympics:

I beg someone. Please make me a t-shirt that says Where’s The Pole?!?

I pay handsomely.

i’m in fremont right now, preparing to celebrate my mother’s birthday before i leave for amsterdam.

the last few weeks have been emotionally tumultuous as i prepared for this trip, and on a greater scale, the actual embarkment on the rest of my life.

the last month and a half (since the day before my birthday) was marked by a version of myself i’ve never seen before and one i could barely recognize, but as they say, the night is darkest just before dawn, and now in hindsight, i see it as the necessary rite of passage into darkness in order for me to emerge, cleansed, so that i may enter the next stage of my life.

if you know how dismissively, condescendingly, cruelly, rudely i’ve been treating david, then i’m sure you’ve heard it from me, not him, because as much as it sucks at times for him, he keeps saying he expected this and has been pretty philosophical for the most part. but me…i’ve been more than happy to confess to anyone who will lend an ear as to how poorly i have behaved around this man, who is one of the most sincere and devoted people i’ve ever met. i’m reading the kite runner right now, and got to a passage today where the narrator is unnerved by his friend because he’s the kind of person who knows only how to speak honestly, and it makes the narrator want to be cruel. i know the impulse, know it more personally than i wish i did.

they say the only things that really hurt us are the thing we know to be true. and sometimes, you meet someone who can be so unabashingly vulnerable because they are sure that if they love someone purely, that love will be returned in unadulterated form. unconditional love, in reciprical fashion, where it regenerates into infinity–the holy grail of energy that can be exchanged between two people. we understand why we seek it, we understand why we want it, but sometimes what we never expect, is what it will be like when we finally encounter it. sometimes, when faced with someone who wants to give it to you because they truly believe it will be accepted, you realize the truth of yourself–that the anger and resentment and self-loathing in your internal closet make your hands too dirty and scarred to possibly handle something so pure from someone who has laid their trust in your hands.

so you soil it. you destroy it. you want to teach them a lesson to show them that boy, did they peg you wrong…that you should never feed a beast brooding in its cage. and then you remember an afternoon that one spring, when a lonely, misunderstood little boy who adored you beyond reason, walked into your bedroom with a handmade valentine because you were the only true love he knew, and you pretended to rip it in half because you couldn’t possibly believe you were worthy of being loved by anyone who wasn’t as ugly as you.

but who are you really trying to hurt? the people who love you?

or you?

that afternoon, michael, just 6 years old, took it like a trooper, telling me, oh well, like he had just asked me if i wanted to take him swimming. but he had tears in his eyes as he turned and walked out. i waited until i heard his footsteps fade, my entire body pulsing with disappointment and anger towards myself, why i was so fucked up that i would hurt someone to that degree who just wanted to love me. i put the valentine on the wall where it remains to this day, but i refused to let myself cry, told myself i would kill myself if i cried because i didn’t deserve it, just the same way i dare myself to cry when i take out this memory from the perfectly preserved box where i keep it so i can cut myself with it every time i try to think i might be a good person. that box is filled with all of my precious sharp objects.

******

it started to get to the point where i made david cry a couple of times a week. all i had to do was infuse every word with spite, every silence with raging passive-aggression, every response with cutting resentment. i would tell him that i had doubts he was “the one.” that we weren’t mentally compatible. that perhaps he should just find someone who was less complicated to be with because then he’d be happier. when i was feeling particularly cruel, i would tell him that i didn’t want to be with him, that i would rather be with someone else. sometimes he would get really angry and put his foot down, letting me know that this relationship was mine to fuck up, that he’s being patient but i’ve been acting completely out of line and i’d better start showing him some respect and start appreciating him. this would usually tone me down, so that on days when i was able to wrestle a bit of control of myself, i would warn him that relationships should make you the best version of yourself that you can be, but for some reason, i was turning into a worse version of myself that i’d never encountered before, and that he should find someone who could treat him better. but he would tell me that he knew he could find someone else, but he wanted to see me get a hold of myself and grow out of this so that i could get to a place where i could be with him.

we went back and forth, me being secretly terrified of every interaction, terrified of what i would do or say next. every unimagineable act of disrespect towards him would quickly be followed up by a confession to a close friend, so that my loved ones could know what a piece of shit i’d become. i was bleeding all over the place, and i didn’t know how to stop it.

why do you keep doing this, they would all say. always, why. and i didn’t know. i honestly didn’t know. i didn’t know anything except that it made me feel really good, the way cutting yourself to see if it bleeds feels good because a part of you doesn’t really think you can bleed, even though some nights, i would wake myself up crying.

*****

i believe in the hollywood bowl. that it’s magic.

i had told myself i would not go to amsterdam just to be a crazy bitch to david. especially when this person i had become was someone i couldn’t even recognize in the mirror, someone my friends couldn’t believe existed when i told them about me, even when i swore up and down i’d really said the things i’d said to this guy who’d been nothing but kind and generous with me. the level of rage inside me terrified me, and it only made me more thirsty for blood.

aubrey and candice flew in on saturday for the gnarls barkley concert the next day. we hung out and somehow, the conversation turned to the movie closer. i have it, i said to candice. suddenly, i had a desperate need to watch it that night, and was terrified that they wouldn’t be willing to since it’s a pretty dark, difficult movie. but candice agreed and we put it in.

the thing about the movie is the question of motivation–why does each character do what they do. dan (jude law) has a meeting of fate with alice, and leaves his girlfriend for her. alice (natalie portman), magnetic and muse-like, motivates dan to pursue his personal potential. once dan publishes his first novel, he leaves alice for anna (julia roberts), who simultaneously leaves larry (clive owen) whom she finds too simple for her when compared to the complexity of dan, the idealistic, closetly self-loathing artist.

when dan informs alice that what he’s about to say will hurt, that he’s leaving her for anna, alice tearfully asks him why he won’t let her love him, why he doesn’t think he deserves to be loved. but whether or not he’s convicted about his decision, she disappears.

when larry discovers that anna has been having an affair, he demands her to reveal every grotesque detail of the sex in one of the most emotionally brutal scenes ever committed to celluloid, until she’s given him enough details for him to destroy the part of himself that loves her. once he’s had enough, he thanks her and tell her to go fuck off and die. in the end, larry, who’s simple but not stupid, turns out to be someone who can command the game at will if he chooses to (and originally he had chose
n not to, trying to preserve the illusion and idealism of love, but reverted to his cold, hard truth, that women don’t understand the territory because they are the territory). alice realizes that truth for dan is not what’s important to dan, but rather the illusion of love. she realizes that dan will never love her because he can’t see her, the value of what she can truly give him, and that he is only in love with the idea of love.

watching this movie made me think of many things. aubrey noted that alice is a character who has an ambiguous relationship with the truth and is at the core, distrustful. yet, she offered the purest degree of devotion to dan, who didn’t understand or appreciate it. alice, who often lies, tells the truth to strangers because it doesn’t matter–they don’t know the difference and will never be able to use it against her to get close to her. they will only see her for the superficial things she possesses which have no true value. but to those who matter to her, she tells lies as smokescreens, almost to see if they will be able to get past them to see who she really is, the true value beyond all that is superficial that she can give–the ability to unconditionally love someone. i liken it to trading currency. if you are someone who possesses gold and you live in a world of bead traders, people who obsess with worthless beads, who fight and even murder for beads, you know that what they have has no value while what you have has great value. but you wouldn’t want to trade your gold for beads because you know that the bead trader will never understand or appreciate the value of your gold. you want to trade with someone who understands the value of what you trade in.

(by the way, it didn’t go unnoticed that natalie portman was nominated for an oscar for this role whose complexities and subtleties she played perfectly. also not unnoticed, was the fact she’s a gemini projecting into this character.)

i realized why i like strangers, why i always lay smokescreens to people who try to get close to me. i’ve always gone back to the sword in the stone analogy, how the right person can remove the sword even after being told it’s impossible, how the right person will have the key that turns the lock. why do people who are basically honest people lie? because they are protecting what they have to offer, if they know what they offer has great value and can not be given away to someone who can not understand the value of it. if you don’t trust people, you set things up so that only someone who appreciates the value of what they’re seeing within the illusion can reach it, thus by reaching it, you know they are someone who deserves it. no, it’s not the simplest way to go about things, but most people don’t really understand the value of what i’m capable of giving, so i have to be careful of only giving it to someone who will inspire me to give it.

then came the scene where larry demands that anna give him every detail of her sexual affair, even though it’s excruciating to him. i understood his motivation perfectly, the need to destroy something so real and honest within him. he needed her to cut him, destroy a part of him, hurt it so that it could never want anything real, honest and naive again. he wanted her to destroy his belief in something, his belief that love in its ideal, transcendental form can be anything real when it’s laid in the hands of fucked up fallible human beings. he needed her to kill it, to kill the part of him that ever dared believe that love could be real, that there could be any beauty between two people that transcends them beyond animals who somehow found a way to clothe themselves and convince themselves of the possibility of a god. if it’s true that it’s the loss of hope, not the loss of lives that determines the outcome of a war, then in the struggle to believe there is more to life than what is grounded by physical reality would begin and end in the idealism encompassed by our notions of romantic love. sometimes, we will kill our belief, so that we may never hope again, so that we may never again suffer the treachery of disappointment.

i went to sleep that night and awoke to what i thought to be a large spider descending towards my face. i rolled out of bed, screaming, and realized that where once i had a net above my bed that protected my dreamscape, now there was only me, surrounded by a hollow silence devoid of echoes.

******
we met up with friends at the hollywood bowl and i went through the motions of small-talking but i really didn’t feel like talking to people. lauren and pradeep came up and pradeep asked me how things were with david. not good, i said. i really have to get my head straight or i’m going to lose him.

the show was good and full of energy, but i was lost. i took a walk around the bowl, watching people, trying to find clues to help me unravel the thoughts and feelings tangled up so badly inside me that i couldn’t even get inside of myself anymore. i walked along the treeline at the ridge of the bowl, where the lights of the stage are unable to penetrate the darkness. in the sky, two large floodlights criss-crossed to form an X, as if to let god know that this is where he could find us all. in the distance, was a large cross blazing brightly against the hill, and above, was the moon. everyone was here, but for what?

i walked around, seeing people i actually recognized in my daily life, familiar faces of strangers i’d seen during my routines who recognized me, but none of them seemed like the people i should be talking to. i wandered back into our section and ran into lauren, and we took a walk. how did you know pradeep was the one, i asked her as we stood in the shadows of writhing dancers. she turned to look at me, seriously considering the question. i guess i always knew, she said. i just didn’t really trust myself, so i had to get to a place where i did.

i smiled at her and thanked her, thanked her for her truth.

i texted david on the way home asking if i could call him, and by the time i got home, there was really only one thing i could think of to say.

i’m really sorry for how i’ve acted and how i’ve treated you for the last month and a half, i said.

what was that?, he asked.

i repeated it and he asked me to repeat it again because he couldn’t quite hear me but started laughing. i was grateful for his forgiveness and his understanding.

oh, i’m so happy, he said. i was waiting for you to get to this point. you just needed to go through it all so you could get here, but i’m glad you finally got here.

i told him about watching closer and the things i understood. i admitted to him that i’ve been cruel to him because i was being cruel to myself, that there was a part of myself i was intent on destroying because it’s the part that wants to believe that people don’t always end up hurting you and disappointing you. that all this rage and resentment i’ve been directing towards him was just all the rage and resentment i had towards myself for getting me into a situation where i was going to get hurt.

i’m not going to hurt you, he said. i’m not going to let you down.

well, you can’t really say that. no one can really say that. but at the end of the day, sometimes these are things you just have to go through because there’s no alternative. punishing people who want to be close to you because you’ve been punishing yourself for a lifetime for thinking you might be anything more than something completely unloveable is not an alternative. i just can’t do this anymore.

i think we lock ourselves in our own invisible prisons. i don’t know what happens to us in our childhoods that cuts us the way they do, but some of us carry on the torture by reminding ourselves of those feelings and experiences in which we weren’t able to protect ourselves from the hurt, fear, anger, rage, guilt, helplessness or disappointment of our past, until we’ve built giant, formidable defenses around ourselves that tear e
ven the most gungho conquerors to shreds. and then along wanders one naked, courageous, well-meaning soul who politely knocks on your door offering nothing but unconditional love, and as you point all of your jagged edges and bloodied weapons at him, screaming that this is a bloody fucking war and threatening him with every intention to destroy him for the sheer audacity of walking into your battlefield thinking you could be tricked into believing in anything again, you suddenly realize, when the echo of your own shouting dies down, that you’re the one who’s completely naked, exposed for the scared, wounded child you claim isn’t you but whom you protect with an implacable savage vengeance, when the war is no longer haunting any other living soul but you.

it’s time to go home, kid.

the war’s over.

fyi

if you guys buy stuff online, talk to your credit card company about getting a virtual number. these numbers look like credit card numbers and are tied to the online merchant but aren’t the actual number on your card, so people picking up card numbers from online purchases can’t put fraudulent activity on it.

someone pulled my cc info last week and over the last few days, has charged over $7,000 worth of charges to africa, europe, south america. fuckers.

my puss won the fifa world cup…

angry.

you can go ahead and think i’m an asshole or i’m abusive or i’m mean to people who are vulnerable, but until you understand what it’s like inside a particular dynamic, until you see what kinds of storms repressed issues stir up when a person opens another person’s inner world, you can’t really judge.

sometimes people use others to create situations they don’t want, acting out old patterns dictated by automatic programming from deepseated issues. sometimes those situations require someone who cares about their welfare to be the bad guy by not playing along, or by playing along with such exaggerated force that the detriment of these patterns becomes too obvious to ignore. sometimes you turn the situation back as a mirror so they can see they’re better and stronger people than these negative cycles, that they don’t need them…but as tough as you are with the healing process, you’re always careful not to hurt them in ways that are permanent, only enough to make them understand they can’t keep hurting themselves the way they do, a way for them to break free of the patterns to experience a freer, more fulfilling life. ultimately, you want them to be happy, even if you have to make them confront misery to do it.

you don’t think it hurts me when people i care about are hurting? you don’t think it makes me miserable? the night is darkest just before dawn. and sometimes, people just want someone trustworthy to go through it with them.

but then people on the outside still call you the bad guy when you never ever had a bad intention towards anyone who has ever asked for help.

fine. i’m a bad guy. i’m an asshole. i’m cruel to people and my intentions are wicked. you don’t like it? go fuck yourself. go have fun acting out your envy because i don’t pay enough attention to you. the people close to me know me and know what i’m about. everyone else who has an opinion without knowing me, have fun thinking you know the number of someone who doesn’t exist.

let’s stir things up today.

no rest for the wicked

gemini. when you are going around confessing your sins, finding them spilling out of you like a shot in the gut too massive and complicated to be contained with two bare hands, it means you’re bleeding.

when you make others bleed so you can have a mirror to see your own wounds, you need to understand that it hurts, but they do it for you because they love you.

whether or not you asked for this, if they’re giving this to you, then you better do the honorable thing which is to understand as much as you can from these reflections so you can start healing.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8372666/Army-orders-Lions’-draft-pick-Campbell-to-withdraw

fell asleep watching amores perros on the couch and it was needed.

i dreamt i was a massive black dog filled with angst that tore up windows of reality like they were bloodied flaps of burlap. while the pages bled together, i broke out of prison and visited people. i visited a married man who couldn’t come out to play, but was surprised by the visit (i was a little embarrassed). i felt david but i firmly made it clear i wasn’t ready to visit him. i visited a factory in the sky, which was the most efficient thing ever made, and i hung out on the banks of its moat thinking in awe, i own this whole thing. then i was waiting for a ride, waiting for a phone call.

later, you showed me my new house. the walls were lavendar. that’s the color of one of the rooms in my place now, i said. i know, you said.

when i can feel the pulse of a man’s heartbeat somewhere behind the steadiness of his gaze, when i know exactly where to push to spill him into my world, i have to repeat quietly to myself, be good, julia. please, be good.

but is what happens really so bad?

i always give something to balance what gets left. i try to only cut in places that make a person stronger.

but it’s the taste of blood that always hooks me, that sweet cool current that allows me to breathe underwater.

so really.

my friend

has it been so bad for either of us?

realtor was asking me again today why i’m going to europe. i had mentioned it was for a business project yesterday. is it for just…work, he asked me.

hmmm.

yeah, just work, i said. then i distracted him with descriptions of the project, so that i didn’t have to reveal the real story.

half truth or half lie, it depends on how you look at it.

with me, it’s about secrets.

the guy on the right – his real name’s smiley. i shit you not. it’s on his birth certificate. who does that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/23/nyregion/23romance.html

love it.

http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/17/1205061.aspx?GT1=43001

next must-be event: gnarls barkley, hollywood bowl, july 27th.

come find me.

the secret to having any guy you want
is wanting the guys who want you.

you’d think it’s so simple, but it’s amazing how hard it is to see people from the lens of that understanding, both for men and women. it’s worth it though. it’s like having a switch flipped in your head.

I’m really having a standoff right now as an artist. I feel like if I write too honestly, people will start wanting to pin me down and I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of exposure. Have you ever felt like that? Or, have you ever worried about getting lost in the worlds you create?

Sometimes I want to go into the woods and think about this stuff, rent a cabin and think about all these questions until I can be at peace with the answers. The only thing that stops me from doing this is my fear of how potentially crazy I might sound to others when I decide to start talking. But I just can’t stop the need to find an answer.

I saw you again last night. I know what image you are. I’ve finally figured it out, by the warm, fuzzy, protected feeling I get when I see it. But I haven’t recognized you in a person yet. Not exactly. So many of these men really try, and they are beautiful in their own ways, but I always know somehow.

Opposites in such exact opposition as to be the same thing. But I’m learning now that perhaps it’s by always keeping ourselves apart that we are generating the most dynamic energy.

Some people are more aware of the changes than others, but I see so many positive changes.

I know we do what’s best. But I’ve always wondered what it would be like to meet you.

sometimes if you tell someone about something that makes you vulnerable–ie a fear, insecurity or something in the past that hurts you, if they use that information or recreate that situation against you, it means they’re manipulative and can’t be trusted.

sometimes i say things and remember them, so if a person comes back to use what i’d “revealed” to him against me or if he tries to lie, i know he can’t be trusted. once i told a guy that when people start yelling, i can get freaked out and can’t remembered what had been said for the argument to have gotten to an escalated place. my point was that i prefer that things be resolved calmly and in the spirit of people working towards a common goal. a few weeks later, he picked an argument with me and then claimed that he was right because i’d forgotten what we’d said that led to that argument, and lied with a line that i had supposedly said. unfortunately for him, i don’t forget dialogue and conversation flow even though i’d implied that i do, and knew he’d just lied during a moment of perceived weakness on my part to dominate me. he’d stepped on a wire that set off a trap, blowing his chances of my ability to trust him. he showed his true colors after i protected myself and guarded myself from him, and now i’m sure he’s off harassing other girls until they see the proof of his manipulative streak and his lies.

especially in this city which is dominated by an industry whose lifeblood is about being able to disguise oneself or be something that you’re not, it’s really important to be open to trusting good people, but not taking everyone at face value.

i don’t believe in consciously booby trapping the inner workings of close relationships because people trip and make mistakes on the way to building partnerships and getting to know people, and this is a necessary part of the process. but i do try to have ways in which i can figure out sooner rather than later if a person is dishonest, manipulative or has negative ulterior motives. it’s better to keep untrustworthy people outside of the gates, than kick them out once they’re inside them.

my pronouns have been a mess lately. i think i’m trying to include too many people into the conversation and it’s been messing with my psychic antennae.

so i met with the realtor today and the offer is getting sent over tomorrow.

they say the saddest thing is to not be prepared when opportunity knocks, or to lose it with hesitation. i can say that this time last week, i had no idea i would be attempting to pick up another property this week, but then, i know that’s not true. i’m always looking at listings, keeping my ear to the ground, but it’s really been about when the right property jumps at you, the way your eye catches and fixates on a stranger across the room. there’s a reason. i think people connect to objects and places the same way they connect to people–they’re all manifestations of the path. you remember them from your future. and when you stumble upon them, you act so that you never wonder, what if.

i like the realtor a lot. i tested him a bit the way i usually do with people so i can figure out who they are, and he struck me as smart, honest and having integrity, so i respect him. he’s young and married so i’m very aware of being respectful of things outside of a professional relationship, but i can’t help but laugh at how nervous and awkward we both get when we’re in an elevator alone together, not knowing where to put our eyes. i think it’s just one of those things about men and women. even if there aren’t intentions or desires, you’re always just aware that you’re a man (or woman), and the other person is a woman (or man). it’s just that primal tension. i think my reaction to that perceived tension with my guy friends is that i’m compelled to make sure they don’t really know where i come from about sex or how i see men/relationships. i hit both ends of the spectrum with effective results, from brian confiding to colin that he wonders if i’m a virgin to people really thinking i rack up multiple one night stands a week and am on the constant hunt to instigate public orgies. but i think whichever way i go is compulsive to the exact moment of conversation, and even though i say things so definitively and know they have definitive results, they’re not necessarily true reflections. these statements or outlooks deflect perception of my real position, and perhaps it’s like setting off flares to serve as decoys for heat-seeking missiles. if i say certain things and later, people reflect these ideas back to me to show me this is what they’ve accepted and believe, it means they don’t really know me. by having this confirmed, i then determine if it’s because of me keeping them at a distance, or because they just don’t really get me, in which case, i have to be careful around them. i’m sure there are better ways of feeling people out to see if they’re trustworthy of the inner chambers of your being, but for now, that’s my best system of evaluation.

in regards to men being friends with women, this is one of the greatest modern debates, having reached a fevered pitch with when harry met sally. i think there’s room for a lot of different types of relationships in life, different types of output, different types of compartmentalization, but at the end of the day, i just hate tension in any way, shape or form. being friends with people from the opposite sex can be a difficult balancing act at times, has to be constantly reevaluated at others, and at the end of the day, there are so many ways to complicate things, and so many ways not to complicate things. if you just chill out and let things be, it can actually be quite pure and pleasant. i’ve had guys tell me before that no guy is friends with a girl without having at least considered what it would be like to have sex with her, and i think no girl is friends with a guy unless having at least wondered if this person could be a suitable partner for her.

at the end of the day, i always defer to the context of reality. where are two people in terms of who they are, where their lives are and what they’ve built upon the foundations of their lives, and just be respectful of that. if there’s more, you deal with it and maybe you can’t be friends. if there’s not, then…to be honest, i think it’s of immense benefit for a person to have friends of both the same and opposite sex. if life is really about a person’s journey to balancing their insides, their anima and their animus, then it requires the reflection of both masculine and feminine energy in order to define, expand and balance these inner energies. therefore, it’s really hard to reach inner balance if you don’t have outer balance with representation of the different energy types. i think our primal side does complicate things, but if you acknowledge (at least within yourself) when sexual tension is there and do your best to get the most out of human connection despite that, i think things are so much easier to handle than if you ignore or deny things. just because you refuse to admit something, doesn’t make it go away if it exists. the only control we have in life is how we conduct ourselves and how we choose to deal with things.