Echo

the guestbook. i’m kind of embarrassed by it but kind of tickled by it. oh my goodness, it’s a little deliciously obscene.

so tonight, let me tell you what went on.

brian’s birthday party at here, gay bar in west hollywood. gay men love me.

but first, david suggested i spend more time with brian so i asked brian if he would come shopping with me to pick out my new sheets, even though i’d bought them already but he was excited about picking them out with me so i said i would return the ones i’d gotten. i want a new color scheme this year. we headed to bloomingdales, and we picked out the sheets and bought them from the saleslady he knew. i took the duvet he suggested though i was firm about the sheets i wanted, and he actually ended up saving me a shitload of money. that’s how he proves he cares about people sometimes, being really helpful that way and it’s sweet. so he tried to help me return the ones i’d gotten but i managed to confuse where i’d actually bought them from, taking him to the wrong department store. he called me a crack head. i’m just not really here right now where time, space, location is kind of a smaller picture illusion to me. i told him his cologne smelled really really fucking good. he forgave me because he knew i meant it and i told him i would return the sheets later that day, myself.

we went home and i snuck into the elevator to head out. he caught me and asked me where i was going. i told him to the drugstore. he asked me what for, and i evaded the question. haha, it’s a game. i leave. he’s sweet, he’s so caring. i’m so evasive sometimes, but sometimes, i just like to be because i just enjoy my time alone. and go about my secret day. i met people. i saw people. sometimes people outright stare. i love people. i hate people. all this in single glances, entire dramas taken in in fleeting, intangible moments.

love. hate. lifetimes. all passed where only the aware remember.

i remember getting a large sum refund which the saleswoman had to go to another floor to retrieve.

that was a minor victory.

and all the unhappy or angry people i passed who felt like they were being constantly ignored by life. their reality. this world that they had created.

and the ones who hated me. and the ones who hated themselves.

and the ones who were free.

everything was so apparent.

i went to an art store and asked about a product and the clerk had no idea. so i bought it and knew i would make it work. and then i went home and with brian’s encouragement (i know you’re funnier than this), it’s a little obscene. and personally, i do find it funny in a bigger picture kind of way of who cares, but how many people are actually big enough to perceive things that way?

it’s all relative to people’s individual perception and i hope no one gets offended because these kinds of things are small things, to me. my birthdays are never appropriate events, just events for people to let go and have fun.

i’m twisted up today because i’m in a different place, but i’m strong.

look, i made a grown man cry today. i made him understand what it meant for his soul to be free and he wept in joy and i kissed him and hugged him like we were old dear friends. i told him, you know the truth, so you pursue all that makes you happy because that’s all that matters. and as tears fell around his brilliant smile, i wiped them away and tasted them on my lips and said, be happy. all that you were meant was to be happy. and i felt dizzy with that knowledge, dizzy with that absolute love that i felt for him in that very moment. and he said to me, i love you, julia. i only met you tonight, and i love you.and i knew that i loved him too. because he was me, and he was him and he was all of us, just like my single drop of water from the faucet, and he was everyone in this world that had hope for something better, something positive, something happier than anything we had ever dreamed, because in that moment, he was aware of himself. and i hugged him and said, i love you, too. i don’t really know you, but i know you. and i love you. and i kissed him where his tears flowed and held him until they stopped.

he is a good person.

this is how things happen. you have to find me at the right moments where it’s safe. you have to ask me the right questions, and i’ll show you something, something that’s really in you. but you have to know the right paths to find me, otherwise i’ll be me, but not the me you seek. but for all honest seekers who were meant to find me, i have always shown the truth.

Relief. Pure, simple, blissful relief.

That’s how I felt when I nearly crawled into my house yesterday morning after a long journey home.

You ever have that experience where you really have to pee and for whatever reason, you’re forced to hold it and you serious think, oh my god, is today the day i, as an adult, wet myself in public???? What? No? Yeah, um, me neither.

But if that were to ever happen, I imagine my feelings before I walked through my own front door were close to that.

And all I wanted to do was hug one of my walls like a child clinging to their mother before the first day after scary daycare.

That’s why it’s Friday night, and I’m happy to be sitting here at home. Doing nothing but cleaning to make my home as happy to be with me, as I am to be within it.

Taiwan.

What was it like? Great. Taiwan is great.

But I just knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. In fact, it was like fingernails screeching across a chalkboard inside me at all times, this anxiety that I was in the wrong place and this was bad. This was very bad.

Even my brother was cranky, from the jetlag, from the MSG in the food…I’m not sure what. But he seemed to completely reject my being there, too. I wonder if he knew that I hadn’t wanted to come, but the only reason I was there was because if I wasn’t, he couldn’t come either. He’s been pretty independent as of late, and his mind seems to have jumped another level up in abstract, adult thought, so it doesn’t surprise me that if this were the case, that he would resent my being there on this trip. I would represent just another way that my mom doesn’t take him seriously as an autonomous being, even if she says she does (she doesn’t). We did have one good day, the day that it was just the two of us, and he was in a great mood. And he seemed excited about when I would leave, calling up our aunt’s friend to make plans to hang out (though he confided he was sad that I was going because he didn’t know when he would see me again, but I reminded him that he was coming to my birthday party, which cheered him up).

The one thing I noticed that was really rubbing me the wrong way was how aggressive and noisy it was at all times. Not the city…my family.

My grandma and I have a funny relationship. She likes me a lot, I like her…in small doses. She’s my mom’s mom and here’s the backstory. Her husband was a government official when the kids were young, an agency like the IRS. When an investigation exposed corruption, my grandfather took all of the blame to protect his boss who had a family and a reputation, and the power to protect his family while he was in jail, which he promised. So my grandfather goes to jail, and this guy does nothing, leaving my paternal great-grandmother and my grandmother to raise 5 kids on just one salary.

My mom’s life was greatly influenced not only by being incredibly poor, but by the shame of having a father who was once a respected and feared member of society being in prison. It became like having a bullseye painted on your back, as they became fair game in their little town. Even her teachers would single her out for humiliation and beatings during class, but my mom said that the thing you always remember, is to never let them see you cry. You take whatever people want to give you, but you never, ever cry. This is what she taught me, even though in the privacy of my childhood bedroom, this strong woman would weep as she told these stories of vulnerability and pride against sadism.

So my grandmother had a tough life, and she’s a tough woman herself. She was a beauty queen turned school teacher during an era when it was okay to take a stick to a child’s hand who showed disobedience. I remember always being terrified of seeing her when I was little, not because she would hit me, but because she was critical. Oh yeah, she’s a Virgo. Every meeting started with her sizing me up, and telling me what needed to be fixed. Usually it was my weight. Sometimes my hair, my clothes, my posture or my manners (she doesn’t hear well so if you greet her, you keep doing it until you know for a fact she heard you). Sometimes if she felt you’d insulted her in some way, she would break out in this hysterically angry verbal attack that came out of nowhere (ie once she had said something to me and swore I had ignored her, and went off on me. I swear to this day, she never said anything to me). So I’ve always been a little afraid of her, and I’ve always been afraid of her criticisms.

So the thing I noticed in Taiwan, is that 1. She’s mellowed out. But 2. She sets off these cycles of anxious energy attacks. Her way of speaking is sometimes an outright criticism or a passive aggressive comment. For example, she thinks my aunt is too fat. When I came, she noticed I’d lost weight and wanted to weigh me. When she saw my weight, she realized I was 20 lbs lighter than my aunt who just had 2 kids. She told me in front of my aunt, “You’re not fat like your aunt.” Later, my aunt whispered, “You’re lucky. Grandma is quite satisfied with your figure.” Later, she wasn’t happy with some food we had bought her so she said, “Why would you buy food that tastes so bad? I guess I’ll have to eat it anyway because there’s nothing else.”

What happens is these negative or passive aggressive comments cause this ball of anxiety in a person. I know because I felt it, but I didn’t have the guts to say anything. But my mom and aunt, they do. So I’m sure they know nothing good comes out of responding, but what happens is they explode, and they get mad and yell things like, “If you don’t like it, then don’t eat it!” Yes, it’s what all of us are thinking, but then out breaks a cat fight and everyone is yelling. My grandma feels picked on by my aunt, my mom yells at my grandma and/or my aunt to stop fighting. And my little 4-year old cousin yelling, “You’re a bad guy!” at me because he wants to punch me.

I think this negativity is maybe the Chinese way. It’s like Jewish moms and their guilt trips, but the Chinese are more overt, using negativity to toughen you up. When we were at a gym in Taiwan, my mom took a aerobic boxing class. Afterwards, she told me the instructor was saying things to the class like, “What are you doing? I didn’t teach you to do it that way. You guys just can’t do it right.” Or, “If you don’t get it by now, you shouldn’t be in this class. I’m tired of trying with you guys.” My mom was noting how she’s never heard a teacher like that in the US speak to a class that way, and that they’re usually really encouraging and positive. She realized that if a teacher spoke like that to a gym class in the US, she would get fired and said, “I guess Taiwanese people just talk like that, but it’s not right. I guess I talked to you and Michael the same way, and it probably wasn’t right.” I didn’t say anything, but I was thankful that she decided to go to the gym with me that morning since it allowed her to come to that realization.

So there were so many moments, through the negativity, criticism and outright fighting, that I would sit in the corner, close my eyes, and hit my fist against my forehead thinking, it’s okay…it’s okay. But I am happy to be home where it’s quiet and I’m alone with the Julia I’ve nurtured over the years from the angry, critical, abusive voice into a nice, supportive, accepting presence when we’re alone together.

I’ve been working hard to clean the house and throw out stuff I don’t need. I think it’s important when you begin a new chapter of life, to clear out clutter. Brian got a new bed, which makes me ecstatic because a lot of his cattiness comes from him being lonely (subconsciously self-imposed), and I like seeing that he’s making room in his new, larger bed, which is symbolic and a positive step.

Lauren came over and she’s stressed with her new job. She’s like a spinning top who can barely see or hear you when she’s anxious, so we watched her spin around our p
lace. I quietly sent her some calming energy.

I slept for 14 hours last night (didn’t sleep the night before), and dreamt of going to this other dimension where a Chinese Master in the middle of a jungle told me I had to learn martial arts in case I became the last One on earth. Then he trained me, first, with how to fight with a stick, because it represented balance. When I woke up, I realized I was whispering all of the Master’s lines inside my head, like the Wizard of Oz. I woke up in time to have lunch with the guys I play basketball with. This was my first time really venturing out of the house, having unwrapped myself from its energy and my hands were shaking from too much sleep (I think my body thought I must have slipped into a coma). Everyone looked really good, really healthy. I still don’t know where I’m going to work–it’ll either be in LA or the Bay Area–but I’m thinking I want to either stay in LA or make it my base where I live part-time in the bay but LA is still home. Tracy joked that I wanted to stay in LA because of them. It’s funny because when I weighed LA versus the Bay Area a few months back, they were one of the reasons that strongly attached me to LA, so he actually wasn’t far off. I feel like at the end of the day, LA as a city may not feel exactly like home for me, but my living space and the people in my life are my home, which makes me reluctant to leave.

So tonight, I’ll sit and spend time with my mormon temple, which brings me peace and inspiration. I wanted to go to the gym, but I’ll probably take the night off, since I was doing 2 hours straight of cardio a morning in Taiwan just to burn off all that excess stress and energy.

Overall, I’m happy. I’m happy to be home, I’m happy to have good people in my life. I’m happy knowing that there are things out there that are tragic and unpredictable or deeply unsettling, but that to have had happiness and peace and to know what they are like, means that you can always find your way back to them, that you can always find your way home.

Barack.

I’m really glad the Flobots put up a new video for Handlebars:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuK2A1ZqoWs

I don’t think they even expected themselves to hit so quickly. Before I left for England, they were just getting airplay and had no show dates scheduled outside of locally in Denver and right before I left, suddenly they were scheduled for the Troubadour for this Sunday. I knew LA would go nuts. I was going to buy a ticket before I realized I was in Taiwan, but now they’re sold out. I want to see the pandemonium. LA loves to make idols, and LA loves to break idols. I hope these guys stay focused because I really like their passion.

What It Do!

Are you guys following the epidemic sweeping the world…the Salmon Dance?

Chemical Brothers Video (song featuring Fatlip):

and then they had a dance contest for the Salmon Dance:

and then existentially, the song seems to explain it’s own phenomenon:

I seemed resistant to it at first, but then I realized I kinda liked that one. He reverses his image to play the other guy and made me feel like I really understood the characters…

mythology. vampires. the more i read about religion and the way different groups used power and propaganda to squash people who were truly spiritual, i wonder if the types 0f people symbolized by vampires started as a group that had a greater connection to the universe and understood things.

because i know i don’t go anywhere unless i was invited. for these demons, it sounds like an awfully polite thing to do.

i read recently that the concept of the devil wasn’t even a notion when the majority of major beliefs took hold.

i believe that there are people who fell off into space so they’re no longer really a part of the collective anymore. and they don’t like people who are still a part of it. but i think overall, people are born good. they just have to believe in it to make it a reality.

Juniper, don’t be afraid of what you don’t understand:

http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2008/06/06/a-robot-that-heals-itself/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080606105454.htm

These are two of the funniest guys I know. One is Batman and the other has a heart of gold.

I’m pretty sure he says “the Hispanic guy from the Oriface.”

Watch!

trust.

how can you ever completely trust anyone when no person completely knows another, especially considering a person’s own inner universe is so expansive that they can never even completely know themselves outside of an overwhelming hunch?

trust is really faith.

but how to know which people really deserve faith?

or is faith the necessity because there’s really no alternative…

do you take a person’s word for it, their life story and its sum, even though you know that their word is not necessarily a reflection of their personal truth?

i don’t believe in saints on earth. just flawed human beings doing their best to make sense of their worlds, some who try harder than others to set good examples.

i’m thankful for rie.

my mom used to always comment that in life, to even have one close friend whom you could tell anything to and trust with anything, is a great blessing. she’s always believed that rie is this for me, and i’ve always been grateful for having her in my life.

i got off the plane and decided to call her. she’d been in japan and i couldn’t remember exactly when she’d be back, but she was home, so i drove the couple of hours to lodi to spend time with her and eric.

it’s good to be around people who are familiar, and to be able to say things that you otherwise wouldn’t say. and as i heard myself say things, a great sadness came over me.

i don’t like to cry in front of people outside of watching movies, but in my own private space, i try to never repress emotion. i think it’s healthy to let them flow through you, since they are as much a part of you as everything else. and so the 2am drive home featured some intense emotions and thoughts.

there are so many things that people can say, “that’s just life.” but at the end of the day, you have to try to make your life your life. and if i know what i want, a life dedicated to discovering and uncovering knowledge, then i think that while my life may not be conventional, i can’t give up that passion even if others try to pin their own expectations or hopes and dreams onto me.

my rule of anything in my life has always been…does something bring me more clarity, or more complication?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/migrationtemp/1534441/Scientists-create-self-healing-robot.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24966666/?GT1=43001

Love it.

The taxi is coming to get me in less than an hour. I’m so relieved to be going home. I won’t completely relax until I’m in my house, in my bed. And then outside of the handful of people I’m willing to talk to right now…blissful meditative solitude.

I want to let you know that I really could use someone to talk to right now. I feel like there’s something that’s in my head that’s really gotten loud, but there’s no one I can talk to about it. I’m not letting it affect me in that the thoughts and emotions come and go and I let it flow through me like water in a creek, while I’m the surrounding mountain that remains steadfast and peaceful, but I wonder if I would gain more clarity if I had someone outside of myself to bounce this off of so it’s not completely self-contained.

It’s a tricky subject though, and I don’t feel comfortable talking about it to even my closest friends. I need someone objective, non-judgmental and with no ulterior motive. It almost makes me want to see a therapist just to talk about this specific thing, but I’ve always found therapists to be either not effective or having their own egos or motives speaking too loudly in a session. The last time I even tried, it was that guy who was trying to present himself as some sort of mystical guru, and then when I pulled things out of his head, he wanted me to tell him about him. I opened his head to prove that he wasn’t being truthful and it wasn’t fooling me, and then he turned it into a psychic session for him which just really proved he was wildly unprofessional. He didn’t have the guts to bill me, because if he had, I would have been very honest about who and what he is.

Not all therapists are true healers or sages, which is sad because a lot of people put their vulnerability and trust in their hands. Certain abilities are blessings, and with power come responsibilities. You don’t abuse a blessing no matter how intoxicating the temptation is.

I guess it’ll work itself out. I’ll either find someone I can talk to, or I’ll figure it out. Or the situation will work itself out. I just keep taking the steps I need to take as they become clear, and hope for the best, but I definitely would be really grateful if you did decide to send me someone to talk to.

I think I was kind of a jackass growing up, in that I didn’t “get it.” I was super naive to the eggshell dance that is the law of social graces, this fearful way of living that creates a list of how people behave and present themselves towards one another, so everyone is in agreement of what can be expected of each other.

I didn’t understand exactly how to fit in, that it was polite to coast under the radar of society and appear “normal,” or how to be appropriate and acceptable, certain to offend no one. My mom told me yesterday that when I younger, I used to win at everything, and it would embarrass her because it would upset the other kids and piss their parents off which to her chagrin, I didn’t seem to notice. So she would yell at me and tell me to let other kids win, sometimes not letting me participate unless we’d agreed upon what I was going to do and at what level. I vaguely remember an Easter egg hunt when I was 5 when I was proud for getting the most candy because I was quick and I was fast, but my mom was mad and made me give it all away except for one piece. I didnt understand why at the time, only that I must have broken some kind of rule but no one ever explained the rule. I think on top of immigrant issues or whatever, my mom just didn’t want to piss other parents off. It’s such an Asian thing, to be ashamed of being too good. That was probably one of my earliest lessons in the human ego, how you have to be careful of it as offending an ego in the wrong way creates resentment at best and throughout history, has started wars at worst. I view ego is one of humanities greatest (and most dangerous) challenges, and am personally, always trying to be careful if something within me is motivated by ego. Confidence is good. Ego is the need for domination out of insecurity or a feeling of lack.

I think the most honest life is one that emanates somewhere within the internal balance of positive intentions, an awareness of the collective which you are a part of and interconnected with, and a commitment to live a life based on the expression of the unique truth of who you are.
I think that when you find that your life and interactions are actually the results of “reactions,” either reacting to what someone has done or said or what you perceive, of feelings of insecurity or negativity, or of an ego desire or injury, there’s an underlying sense of imbalance and anxiety.

The strongest and calmest position in life I’ve found is to reach a place of true inner integrity and balance, with a trust in yourself that from this position, you will be able to positively handle the challenges that come to you externally.

As I hang in the balance between all that has collectively brought me to where I am, and the new era which lays before me, I want to share two pieces of knowledge that I came into this world with which I have known deep throughout the core of my being, knowledge that has been with me since even my earliest conscious memories. I think the two are left brain/right brain, logical/intuitive expressions of the same concept, a definition of the universe.

1. What is infinity small is the same as what as infinitely large. Micro or macro, whichever way we choose to search, we will eventually find the same thing. Everything is circular and what is in exact absolute opposition resides in the same place. There is a place where everything that exists expands so completely, that it all exists in one tiny dot of being.

2. My first visual memory is of a faucet. From this faucet comes one tiny, perfect drop of water which is so small, yet as I look into it, it inverts and it encompasses everything, including the faucet, me and everything in the universe beyond, yet without ceasing to be a single drop of water. I used to see this image before I fell asleep as a kid, and it would drive me crazy because it didn’t make logical sense that this drop of water was both a small object in the world, yet it was itself, everything around it and also the entire world..everything. It would twist my brian, but intuitively, I knew what I was seeing was true and explained everything. I tried to explain this vision once to a classmate when I was 9, and she gave me such a look of disdain and called me “weird” with such disgust and venom, that I never told anyone about it again. I knew it was important knowledge, that it was real. But I didn’t know why no one else seemed to know it, too.

And then recently, I read a quote from the Indian poet, Kabir:

All know that the drop merges into to the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.

That just confirmed it for me, that in an ancient time, someone who had knowledge had also understood the same thing that I’ve spent my adult life trying to find a million languages to communicate so people will understand themselves. It’s the truth. I think deep down, no matter how we visualize it or express it or even how we come to it, we know it because it’s where we come from and what we are.

We can be as bad as we want, or as good as we want. It doesn’t change the fact that we’re still connected.

I just explained to David what the term “blue balls” means while sitting next to some monks at Starbuck’s.

Okay, so I’m going home early, taking a flight on Wed instead of Sunday. I can feel it in every part of me…the physical stiffness and awkwardness in my body, the whine of anxiety in my chest, the confusion and irritation in my mind, the tension nightmares. This is not where I’m supposed to be right now.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate an opportunity to travel and that I’m not grateful for my opportunities. It’s just that this isn’t the right time for this trip, and I’m really here as a favor to my family but truthfully, this is not where I’m supposed to be right now. I should be in my home base, resting and preparing. All I’m doing is eating and sleeping through the days and nights, trying to stay centered and generate the energy needed to communicate with who and what I’m supposed to be communicating but it’s difficult because I’m not where I’m supposed to be so it’s like trying to do your work remotely on a faulty wifi connection. Everything around me and inside of me is screaming that I’m out of sync and need to get back. So I called the airline figuring if it’s too much trouble, I would stay, but in a 5 minute phone call and without having to pay extra, I was able to change my ticket. I knew it was the right decision when relief instantly washed over me. And now I’m just biding my time until Wednesday.

Taiwan is a great place otherwise, though I just feel completely out of sync right now. It’s like watching a movie and all of a sudden, the main characters disappear and all it is is thousands and thousands of extras and you realize, something’s not right…what happened to the movie?

I’m falling asleep at random times, but it’s not so much sleep in terms of resting or escaping, but almost deep trance-like states. I’m dreaming almost immediately, even though a part of me is aware of what’s going on around me…I can hear the conversations of people in the room, I can hear TV’s, I’m aware of what’s going on. Yet, I’m also in this dream world.

In these “dreams,” I’m exploring places and looking for people. I’m waking them up and telling them, it’s almost time. I see people who are sad or are filled with doubt, and I am touching them gently on the shoulder and telling them to stand up. Sometimes, I show them projections…they’re almost intellectual projections that show them religion through time, how man’s strive for spirituality has been manipulated and distorted through organized religion by handfuls of unscrupulous men who were desperate for power, when God belongs to each and every one of us because God is everywhere and God is everything and God is every one of us. There is no seperation between what is God, or the Universe, or whatever name you want to call him/her/It/That, and the energy that surrounds us and animates us. God is love. Positive energy. The transcendental lifeforce that with our lives and our good intentions, we honor, and with malicious intent, we destroy. People have wasted thousands of years and thousands of lives fighting over what to name this force, but it’s the most ridiculous of disagreements that only sidetracks our collective focus. Everything that a person seeks, we already have access to if we let go of fear or doubt and rise up to accept it and us. These projections that I show people in my dreams are images, almost like mirages, yet within them are all these ideas that don’t need to be spoken, so that it’s almost a whole conversation conjured up in a vision. And in the dreams, people understand. Because we are all connected, and deep down, Truth is something we all know. It’s time we let go of the lie that destiny is in the hands of others or at the whim of uncontrollable forces, and realize that with acceptance of who and what we are, come unity and strength and an ability to recognize truth and love and a person’s righteous path, and in accepting our connection to each other and the greater entity to which we all belong, we’ll find that really, so much of this struggle of life is really an illusion and beyond that, are the things that really matter.

For me, there is no greater power than love, and for me, there is no separation between God and love and the energy that is the lifeforce of every being, and that’s what I’m always trying to explain so that people understand. It’s knowledge they have within themselves; there’s nothing extraordinary about me. We all come from the same place so we all have the potential for awareness. I do realistically know that not all human beings are sapient or aware, and this can make them dangerous, which is why those who are enlightened have a certain responsibility. We are only as strong as our most ignorant point of consciousness.

I don’t claim to connect closely with everyone outside of a fundamental respect for people and an understanding that we are part of the same collective being, but for those who are closer to me, those in my “group soul,” or in my psychic phone tree so to speak, I think we’re getting to the point where it’s very important that we start waking each other up, especially those of us who are powerful reality projectors, because there’s something happening, and it’s important for people to remember who we are and what we’re really about, and sort themselves out so that they are powerfully projecting life energies filled with positivity, love and strength.

I really feel it’s important right now, and we could really make some wide-reaching positive changes if we can stand up and work together now. There is a door opening.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24890316/wid/11915829?GT1=40006

soon…

this monkey’s gone to heaven…

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/29/healthscience/brain.php