Echo

every moment we are simultaneously living and dying.

in fremont recovering from the surgery. arm in a sling, limited mobility. can finally somewhat type, albeit standing up as i can’t lift my arm f0r a month. surgery went well and the pain can mostly be relegated to the background, just bad in the morning. i’ve got percocet but have been trying to keep it minimal in power. i hate pills. am watching about 4 movies a day, reading about 3 books a week. not writing. fell into a bit of a low patch where i hate my creative output, not happy with self, place in life. i know it’s just a phase, since my mood can be influenced by how i feel physically. also suspect my left knee needs minor surgery. i really went to town last year with my training-like-a-professional-athlete objective.

watched 2012 and got more anxious. whatever is supposed to happen 12.21.12, we’ll get a hint of it on 12.12.12 as well, which is a date i’m more interested in anyway. they’re both 9 days incidentally. i’m thinking it’s the revelation of the higher consciousness but who knows…if it changes life as we know it, it could do away with our physical attachment to this reality. whatever happens is going to happen though, so it’s best to deal with it with three eyes open.

watching mass media though, i’m noticing a change in creative output. there’s been a huge wave of media dealing with the concept of Others, both showing them in a collaborative, humane light (Avatar, District 9) or fetishizing them (the whole vampire 0bsession). it was most disturbing in the past, when films showed a terror of Others as a threatening, malignant force (ie Aliens, Independence Day, that Tom Cruise movie that escapes me right now). those spread an ignorant kind of fear but were also indicative of the overall terror of the unknown. collective consciousness is evolving. this new era coming up is definitely one i feel more comfortable in. i feel like most of my life i’ve been out of place, waiting for the rest of the world to be at an open-minded enough place to accept me instead of being afraid or threatened by me, and it’s happening now. for now, i’m just observing. i’m out of the loop, on the bench, healing. feeling the vulnerability of my human body, the precariousness tied to this level of life. we are so much bigger than our bodies. we have to find a better system.

outside of that, very little to report. i recorded an “interview’ with a guy i met a couple of weekends ago in seattle. he had a moustache tattoed on the side of his finger so when he held it up below his nose, it looked like he had a moustache. he was really into me but i kept it friendly but platonic–he’s very interesting, a bit of a muse connection, but not someone i can see myself with as a partner. i met him on a friday night and when he found out i was a writer, he told me he had a lot of stories. he started telling them to me and i soon realized that i would need to record him to capture everything…he was overwhelming me with details. so he agreed to meet for lunch the next day but asked me to not call before noon because “i plan to do some coke tonight so i won’t be up early tomorrow.” everyone knows how i feel about cokeheads (not to be trusted). the next day, he regaled me with stories about going to boarding school and at 17, seducing his english teacher. about his travels across the country, about the many times he’d been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. he was coming 3 weeks off a break-up with the mother of his son (a woman who’s half chinese and half vietnamese, thus explaining why he was so zoned in on me), and his eyes would well up with tears every time he talked about it. he told me that 3 years ago, he was in a bar and a drunk guy had threatened his friend so he got in the way to protect him. the drunk guy smashed a pint glass in his face and it required surgery to stitch his face back together. he and his wife used to go out a lot but after that, he looked like frankenstein and he was self-conscious about going out. i used to be a pretty good-looking guy, he said. and then suddenly, it was all gone. i didn’t even look human anymore. it’s taken until now for the scars to heal, and outside of a small scar on the tip of his nose, there’s no physical evidence of the disfigurement though psychologically, they’re still deep.

i listened to him for a good 3 hours. i could tell he was self-editing, more careful about what he was saying because of the tape recorder, but there was plenty there. to be honest, i’ll probably never listen to the tape. sometimes i think i meet these people and talk to them more for them and their catharsis than me really trying to get direct “material” out of it. i know that i was exhausted afterwards and felt really heavy, and slept 5 hours through the afternoon, into the night. as he had spoken to me in those hours, i was somewhere deep inside him, feeling the core of pain within, trying to siphon it, understand it, release it. this man was very strong, very kind, but whatever it was he was carrying was very painful and heavy. i never got a good look at it or a good handle on it, but i hoped it helped.

that night, he called me and invited me out again. i happened to be in the area, after giving a writer who had very negative energy and was frustrated about the state of publishing some ideas about electronic publishing. so i met up with him and his friends. he confessed to me that he’d had mixed feelings after meeting, like he wasn’t sure if he felt used. i told him he shouldn’t feel used, that my intentions are always good. he said that he’d never told anyone a lot of the things he’d talked about, and i told him it’s okay, strangers often find themselves confiding in me and it’s because i don’t judge…i just listen and try to understand. he confessed that he’d invited me out because he’d been worried, that after he’d talked to me that i would think he was a really fucked up person. i told him that he was a good guy, just going through a lot right now, trying to get a handle on the rest of his life. i bought him a drink, but still kept it friendly, even though i could see he was working through his ambivalence, wondering why he felt so deeply connected and having told me so many personal things when he didn’t really know anything about me (he actually wondered this outloud. the truth was, he never really asked me questions about myself. i sensed my value to him required him to subconsciously keep me mysterious so he could use me as a mirror. that’s usually how it is. that’s how “work” connections tend to feel, rather than “personal” connections). at the end of the night, he said, “i really like you. you’re really smart, and analytical. you’re not like other girls. and you’re incredibly sexy too, but that’s obvious. i really like you, but i don’t know if i like like you, or like you as a friend.”

“you want to like me as a friend,” i said quickly.

he looked a little hurt, and asked why.

“i just feel that’s the optimal distance to really appreciate me,” i said. for most people, trying to push for more erases all the positive that the connection as it was meant to be produces. i have many connections that seem to make sense on such a deep level, but not so much in the mundane world. i don’t know why they happen, but i find that by going with them and letting them naturally the way they seem meant to unfold holds great benefit to both me and the other person. i’ve learned that my life generally goes better and i seem more tangibly “lucky” if i’m open to them, even if sometimes, they put me in contact with people i would normally never interact with. i think on some level he understood this (he was clearly still in love with someone) but on an ego level, he wanted to be able to place a label on his feelings so that they could be more comfortable, so he kept trying, putting his arm around me at one point like i wouldn’t notice. i told him it was late and i had to go. i wished him the best of luck. i remember the look on his face as he watched me walk out. like he was trying to memorize me.

i learned a
long time ago, you can’t save people. you can’t make their choices for them, as it’s presumptious to think you could do such a thing, and it defeats the purpose of each man living his own life and learning the lessons of his unique life journey. but i’ve learned that i can listen, and i learn that as i understand things, people seem to understand as well. at least, there’s a comfort to this, that for a brief time, even with a complete stranger, they felt present, seen and known. i remember almost everyone i meet. inside me, they’re all there, their stories, their hearts, their souls. in the deepest of nights, i can feel their echoes pulsing in the darkness. there’s very little difference in terms of what goes on within and what goes on without. everything happens for a reason, including why we meet who we meet, and what happens when and where it happens. i’m still learning what my purpose is here on earth, and perhaps when the time and place have arrived, it will all become naturally clear, part of the flow, and all this is part of getting me to where i’m supposed to be; i’ll never know until i’m in a position of looking back. when the footsteps stop and i’ve finally reached the end of the journey, the top of the mountain to observe the meaning of my life in its entirety. until then…it is what it is.

can we cross out of our bodies and still retain memory and consciousness?

i don’t know how to get close without getting in trouble. it’s like i can’t breathe that close.

i tried to love you the best i could, but i’m sorry i didn’t know how you needed it.

i almost lost this world once. i don’t want to lose it again.

we, of another race, see you.

i lost my compass. like a boat just drifting now, waiting for a full moon i can hang on to.

winning is lonely.

so is dying.

so is living.

So I’ve heard before that randomly looking at the clock and seeing 11:11 means some kind of presence of forces from another plane. I don’t usually see 11:11, but I’m always seeing 12:12. So I decided to google it today to see if there’s any significance to that, and found this link.

Whut.

Back in Seattle! Ran into Brian yesterday as I was getting ready to leave for the airport, so we had lunch and worked it out. I don’t stay mad very long. That’s always been something I’ve been good at.

Had a fiasco at the airport where I realized I couldn’t find my Seattle keys. Panicked because my apt office was closed for the holiday so they wouldn’t be able to let me in either. I’d realized I didn’t have them after dropping off the rental car, and ran back to search the car. Couldn’t find them there. I searched my suitcase as well. I knew they weren’t in my condo because the place is completely empty, and started panicking about having dropped them somewhere. I talked to my mom and she said to check the rental car company again, and sure enough, they’d found them. So they sent them on a shuttle bus, and I had to run out of the security line to meet them on the curb outside. A rep from Virgin came out and told me I had 15 minutes before they closed the gate, so once I grabbed my keys and got pushed through security, I only had 4 minutes left. The girl in front of me was on the same flight, so we both ran, but when we got to the gate listed on our tickets, there was no one there. But then we noticed people running to the next gate who said they had the wrong gate listed on their ticket, too, so we followed them. When we got to the check-in, the lady said, “This isn’t your flight. This is to New York!”

So we ran and found a Departure board that listed a new gate for our flight, and went running. The room was full, so we pushed through all these people only to get to the check-in and there was no one there. I ask a nearby guy, “Did they close the gate already?”

He kind of looks at me in a really amused way and says, “Uh…we haven’t started boarding yet.”

Everyone nearby started laughing, so I turned around and said, “I apologize to everyone I just needlessly pushed out of the way.” This Filipino couple was really laughing, saying I made their day with the way I rushed in thinking the plane had left. They said I’m like a comedian. Turned out, I was sitting right next to them, so when I sat down, I said, “Oh no, now you’re gonna make fun of me the whole flight.” They were really nice.

Made it to Seattle, which was warmer than LA (LA was thunderstorming when I left). Woke up this morning having no idea where I was.

great song. i don’t know how i feel about joint french-japanese anime.

been sleeping on an air mattress in my empty la condo. i put the bed in the dining room because that has the best views of the city skyline and temple. the energy is just absolutely incredible. i need someone to pay a premium for this. i think i’m gonna make that happen. it’s gotta go to the right people, who can do something with this level of positive energy.

I hung out with Whitney last night. I haven’t seen her since my birthday last year, and we caught up. I told her about that dream I had that she was in last month. She’s in a really good place, too. She’s a Scorpio dedicated to a Gemini craft (writing) and I’m a Gemini training in Scorpio magnetism, so she and I tend to benefit each other in ways that aren’t clearly tangible. I was talking about how the kids these days are different. At least my cousins…they’re born fast-tracked in a way, possessing a deeper level of knowledge and skill to maneuver the world than people of our generation. She said that we’re kind of in a 5-year no man’s land, that the generation before us was Gen X, and after us are the kids who grew up in a world where information travels really fast through cellphones and the internet (we didn’t have computers or cellphones in school). She thinks the 5-year gap involves people born from 1977-1982. So we can bridge communication between Gen X-ers and the new generation, but we don’t really belong to either.

I told her that I meet a lot of people born in the early 70’s or in 1983/1984. She said that makes sense, because these are the people closest to us from the other groups…so there’s almost a connection, they almost get us…but we’re still very different.

I don’t know. My experience of life is that I have such strong, powerful, intangible connections with people very easily, but it’s hard to form connections on the mundane level. Probably because deep down, I believe this is the level of illusion, so there’s not much point for me.

My body will not last long, but my soul lasts forever. The rider often outlasts his horse. And then what? Is the world ready for the new evolution?

Also, first song on the radio when I got into my rental car… Wake Up by Arcade Fire.

Power Out off the same album was playing when I went inside after running into Beau.

Last summer I said it’s been coming back to Arcade Fire…their music popping up to signify important (magnetic) happenings.

******

My aunt told me that Edison and Jonathan wet their beds so their grandmother tries to wake them up to get them to go to the bathroom, but it’s impossible to wake them up because they sleep so deeply, it’s like they’re dead to the world.

I told her that I had problems as a kid as well, because I was a deep sleeper and my dreams are so real, that if I have to go to the bathroom, I’ll find one in my dream, but that would cause me to wet the bed. It took me a while to train myself to learn not to trust dream bathrooms.

But the interesting thing is this. I’ve spent most of my life believing that we actually go somewhere else when we sleep…I was very hard to wake up when I was young (and still am), and I’ve always wondered if we actually can interact with the real world as our dream selves (ie, in my dream, I go to Ireland…maybe it’s a place I’ve been in a past life…and people there perceive a presence as a haunting or a ghost, but it’s really a real person projecting themselves into their space within a dream).

I asked my aunt if she saw Avatar. I reminded her that when the humans pop out of the bodies, the bodies can not be woken up. That’s how I feel about sleep sometimes. It’s very hard to pull me back, and takes time because I’m actually somewhere far away. And I think my cousins are the same.

It’s the revolution, I told her. The rise of the Others. Don’t be afraid.

First night back in LA and who do I bump into on the street but Missed Connections Guy. Had a great conversation. There was more light in his eyes. I told him about wanting to move to San Francisco next year, and he got excited because he moved to SF when he was 19 and spent most of his 20’s there…he considers it where he’s from. He said that if his living weren’t tied to the film industry, he would move to SF in a heartbeat.

I mentioned coming back to LA at the end of the month for shoulder surgery. He invited me for drinks the next day, but it didn’t sound very practical because he had a 7am call time, and said he’d be working a 14 hour day, but I agreed to meet (he didn’t show up but I met this NBA player’s brother and talked with him. It was interesting, but I’m not really impressed by people whose identity is based on the success and notoriety of others. I’m still meeting people who are close to BD. I even told this guy, Ro, that Baron and I are destined to be homies when the time is right…he laughed and said, that’s probably true).

I told him it was great as always to see him, and we hugged. He recoiled in horror, asking if he’d hugged me too hard and hurt my shoulder. I told him it was fine, it’s just a warrior wound, not a day to day thing.

He laughed and said, “I love a woman who has warrior wounds.”

I secretly loved that his eyes were glowing.

Beau. Our paths keep crossing. I’m not going to chase you. But I do wonder what you mean. At the very least, I wanted to talk to you about Avatar.

i was supposed to fly home to seattle today, but instead, had to change my flight to la. my real estate agent called to tell me that brian had left the place a mess and it would cost $200 to haul everything out. when i moved out, we had thrown out what we could until we filled the dumpster. some of the stuff i left for brian in case he wanted it for his new place, the rest we just couldn’t throw out until they emptied the dumpster on wednesdays. i’d emailed brian, who was living there for another two weeks, to tell him that anything he didn’t want to just throw out, including some specific objects that i’d tried to but didn’t have room in the dumpster for.

he told me no problem, he would do it. my realtor called last week to ask if brian had moved out yet, and i told her he did (that’s what he’d told me), and she said the place was a mess with stuff everywhere. i called him and he said he’d left some things that he would pick up on saturday, then called on saturday to tell me the only things he’d left were just some towels etc. i told the agent that the cleaning company could come in, but she called yesterday to say that the house was still full of stuff and it would cost $200 to hire a disposal company because it was too much for the cleaning ladies to take out…it would have to be a separate job.

so i had to change my flight and fly down, and when i got to the place, it was even messier than when i left it. he’d taken all the stuff he did want, and in rooms i’d left empty, he’d left stuff everywhere. he hadn’t thrown anything out. and it wasn’t just my stuff, it was all of his as well.

i’m so ridiculously pissed. he’s just so unreliable. so i’ve filled up our dumpster again and there’s still so much stuff. part of the reason i’d asked him to do it was because after the garbage is collected on wednesdays, the dumpster will be empty. but he hadn’t thrown anything out and in fact, left more trash. the place was a total mess. this is so disrespectful. i’m absolutely livid.

my passions burn hot but are short-lived.
but my memories run long and warm.
i live where moments are created
in the space of a film projectionist’s booth
in a room responsible for so much
there is space for one other.

i am a powerful being, but i do need to be tamed. the softer i am in the tiniest of places, the stronger i am in the most expansive.

1. you can take the girl out of texas. but you can’t take texas out of the girl.
2. i love a man who has prepared for me.
3. i love a man who lets me win but never lets me know.
4. i love a man who glows.
5. i love a man who brings out the gentlest and strongest parts of me.
6. i love a man who makes me feel we’re two parts who believe in the same thing.
7. the more i look for you, the more i find of me.
8. the more i find of me, the more i find of you.
9. you shouldn’t wait to cross the bridge.

wow, this guy really makes me realize that my greatest love is my brother. something inside me just curls with happiness when he’s around.