Echo

My first day of being cleared to play basketball, I sprain my ankle playing a game of 21. DAMN.

Play M*A*S*H online!

I found out that I’m going to marry Ben Wallace, drive a red Audi, have 1 kid, and live in a shack in Fremont where my job is being depressed.

Excellent!

I walked up the entrance of the restaurant where we had ordered takeout. As I approached the door, I noticed a recently purchased, maroon Hummer pull up to the curb. I paused in my entrance into the restaurant, wanting to see who the driver was, this person who could afford such a nice car. It was a middle-aged man who looked like some Ivy-League schooled CEO of a software company, who also happened to look mildly familiar. The takeout wasn’t ready so I waited. Finally, they called my name and I took my bag of food and headed towards the door. I walked by the Hummer’s driver who was having dinner with his wife and three angelic daughters. And then it hit me. Where I had seen him before.

“Hey kids! I saw your daddy at a sex club downtown fucking a more slender woman who most definitely wasn’t your mommy!”

No. I would never do that. Not in this town.

Today I went to the Clippers/Rockets game with Brian. I had bought these tickets in a package deal several months ago, so I had forgotten exactly when the game was. I had just came home from physical therapy in the morning and was running out the door to Sarita’s to hang out and watch the Michigan game, when I went to print out my tickets and found out that they were for 12:30pm. It was 12:22. DAMN. So I grabbed Brian who was trying to eat a slice of banana covered with peanut butter and told him we were going to have a boys afternoon out and go to a Clippers game. RIGHT NOW.

We got there at halftime and found our seats. We were sandwiched between these 20 year-old Asian kids and this black family. I was immediately a little bit irritated about having to sit next to a whiney Asian girl and her high-pitched voice throughout the game, and by the fact that there was a pile of nachos on the floor in front of my seat that the guy sitting next to me on the other side needed to move.

So we sit down and Brian and I are trying to pick which team we were going to root for. He reasons, he works on Tmac campaigns so he should root for Houston, but Marko Jaric of the Clippers is his boyfriend. I told him he should root for Houston because I had Bobby Simmons on my fantasy team today so I would be rooting for him, and that way, we could root for opposite teams and get really heated and into it like men at ballgames. (I later realized that Brian should obviously root for Houston because he’s freakin’ FROM Houston).

So I’m telling Brian little facts and statistics about the game and players, as I’m prone to do. (note: I’ve spent so much time around my brother, that my first instinct when I’m in a situation where I think of a fact or explanation that someone I’m with may not know, is to share that knowledge with them. It makes me an obsessive trivia quoting dork). So I’m telling him things like, “Elton Brand has a size 17 shoe.” “Marko Jaric is a Libra.” “Yao Ming has a strong lower body but a disproportionately slender upper body, making him look like a T-Rex when he runs.” “My PT told me Elton Brand told him that Chris Kaman is a virgin and that’s where he gets all of his power.” And then I notice the guy next to me keeps laughing every time I say something.

So I sneak a glance at him and see that he’s a young, black guy with creamy, caramel skin, and these dark, curled eyelashes around warm brown eyes. Wow. I wanted to kiss him right there. Other furtive reconnaissance glances revealed that he was attending the game with his mother and another maternal female figure. Who was holding this adorable, stuffed Clippers Rally Monkey. I thought he was the cutest thing.

The next big play, I softly quipped as if to myself, “Why are they double-teaming Bobby Simmons?” (note: Bobby is not such a good player that teams need to put two defenders on him, like on a Kobe or a Garnett). I heard him laugh and agree. After a few moments of silence, I figure this exchange is over. But then he said, to seemingly no one in particular, “It’s not like he’s Tracy McGrady.” I laughed. I knew he was talking to me.

Throughout the game, he and I would trade comments on the game without ever really looking at each other. After I went nuts for Bobby Simmons free-throw, he finally looks at me and asks, “Do you play fantasy or something?”

I said, “Yeah. I’ve got Bobby on my team for this game.”

He laughed and said, “That’s an unusual choice.”

I said, “Well, I needed field goal % and free throw %, and Bobby has great field goal percentage and shoots over 90 percent in free throws because he’s only missed one free throw this season.”

He pauses, not knowing what to say, then laughs saying, “Well, he’s doing great for you today.”

I asked him, “Do you play fantasy basketball?”
(thinking…well I should probably be up front…I’m a big dork.)

“No,” he said, then softly added, “Just um, fantasy golf.”

(superdorksoftheuniverse UNITE! Excellent.)

And then, throughout the game, he did the sweetest thing–he would cheer with me whenever Bobby did anything good or was at the line shooting free throws (note to non basketball-game attenders: Free throws are not a very exciting aspect of the game, so people don’t usually get excited).

(also note: at one point in the final quarter, he stood up to cheer, and you can bet I checked out his ass. I’m not very knowledgeable on how to judge asses since I’m more of a leg/back/arm girl myself, but his ass was definitely appealing.)

I started wanting to figure out a way to be able to maintain some sort of contact with him once our shared experience of this basketball game was through…ask him for his number? Lean over and whisper into his ear, “I think you’re the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time.” ? Psychically give him the Jedi mind trick to make him ask me for my number?

But then his phone rang. He was engaged in a conversation with someone about where to find something in what sounded like a bedroom. I was pretending that I wasn’t listening, but I couldn’t help but listen, and he was pretending that he didn’t know that I was pretending not to listen. In terms of the conversation, I deduced that when he said, “it’s by my TV,” it would not be a woman he’s living with on the phone because I doubted there would be a “my” tv and a “your” tv. Also, he didn’t say any form of closing comments to end the call. He just snapped off the phone. And no girl will ever let her boy just turn off the phone when he’s done talking without saying a “Bye” or a “Later” a “Love you honey you stupid cunt who’s ruining my life.” So my robot brain concluded that he was talking to a guy, probably a roommate.

Just as I figured it was all clear, that as far as I knew, he was still a single guy, his mom asked him, “Was that Kim?” Doh! He quickly said, “Uh no, that was um, Trey.”

maybe she said “Kiiiiieeeen” like “Ken.” Not like girlfriend Kim. But like boyfriend Ken.

Shut up robot brain. That man has a girlfriend.

So at the end of the game, Brian and I are leaving with 13.4 seconds to go on the game clock. We step down to the row in front of us, and I look up at the guy sitting next to me…finally get a look his face in its entirety. And….he was a trainwreck. Baby-was-born-ass-first ugly.

No, I’m just kidding. He was really cute. Baby-face, very sweet smile, looked like your classic nice guy. Such a warmth about him.

I tell him to have fun and walk to the end of the aisle. I look back and see he’s still looking at me, smiling at me. I smile and turn away. I look back and he’s talking to his mom, but he catches my glance and we share another smile.

It really takes very little for me to be happy sometimes. Just having a nice, gentle, pleasant connection with someone, for just a short time, is really nice sometimes. It’s a warm feeling, like having laid out in a field all day, on a warm, sunny afternoon.

Where’s my basketball-loving boy next door with the radiant smile? I’m still waiting for you to cuddle with me.

the big questions

does secretly keeping an eye on me
make the hungriness go away?
does knowing about my insides
answer all of your questions?

does it quiet the noises in your head
that keep you up at night?
or do they pounce when you break the surface
of each waking repetitive day?

have you ever heard the night confessing
sharing its deathbed regrets?
does it throw a volatile little-boy tantrum
when you ever so politely decline?

would it surprise you to look inside a well
and meet a familiar pair of eyes?
will the shock of the unexpected
make it any less of a hole in the ground?

do you worry about all that is lost out at sea
hoarded in its folds so they never return to shore?
do you secretly believe maybe all of those things
are perhaps not so unlucky at all?

do you cry while watching the daily news
because you never learned how to cry for yourself?
or do you automatically fast forward all the way through
so all that is left is the weather?

can you remember the last time the sun
warmed your face
without needing you to draw it into the sky
with a child’s set of washable markers?

do you really believe any answer exists
before it has been discovered?

there is nothing more desolate
than the littered fairgrounds
the morning after the anima of the passing carnival
has been inhaled into the tenacious clay of the night
the faint impressions
and incomplete clues of renounced belongings
all that remain of what once may have existed
(or perhaps
had been dreamed all along)

and no good place to start making any sense of it all
except for a beginning without a beginning
and a persistent feeling of something unresolved
that just.
won’t.
leave you alone.

and then there’s that famous story about
that magnanimous guy
who thought he could keep all his little ones safe
if he bound them by their shoes to the earth

but he neglected to calculate the possibility
that nobody likes hanging upside down for
damn near the entirety of their lives.

if i told you the world would end today
would it be enough to move you to find me?
or is it never the time to seize the courage
to just ask the questions
you don’t really want to have answered?

(well if you want to know
i could tell you now
but you’re just gonna call me a liar)

there’s nothing here but
plain
old
simple
gravity.

and whole lotta old folks
waxing nostalgia
languidly rocking in homemade porch swings
that never seem to figure out how to stop creaking.

If I emailed someone the html code for my template, will you tell me how to adjust the margins of my text??? I need it wider. It screws things up all the time, especially when I write poetry.

Naked

It suddenly hit me today.

My blog is an extension of me. It’s my way of tentatively testing the world to see how it reacts to a “real me,” which is secretly a milder, simulated me, before I risk my true self in the world outside. Just trying to learn how to feel safe and not be afraid of the world.

I guess all this time, in terms of all the people I’ve never met who comment, I’ve never really been able to visualize you as real people, having entire beautiful, dimensional universes of your own. That was just too overwhelming for me. You were almost like abstract people, almost voices in my head, characters in an imagined reality. Because a life of loneliness is like a life of being always on the run, creating your own reality because you’re playing this game all by yourself and if you rest, you might just find out there’s nothing there. And deep down, you wonder if it’s possible that there might be people who understand you out there. Like life on other planets, you know? You’re afraid to hope, but deep down, you would do anything for that to be true.

But to really think about all of you guys as real people, scattered all around this great expanse, who somehow feel connected through my writing by a sense of mutual existence…..wow.

Is it possible?

That there exists true understanding of each soul in this world?

And that in fact, each and every one of us is never alone?

Is it really possible to be able to reach out and touch people, even if in your mind, you can only see them as faceless, shadowed forms yet undoubtedly, kindred spirits?

Life is so amazing. There are so many days that I want to pause, take a moment to just appreciate how amazing and full and vibrant life is. The act of living and being in a world that is living. The feeling is so huge it challenges the notion of infinity. But it feels like the world doesn’t allow for that. Our world makes us focus on day to day mundane living, giving us no room to appreciate everything else that makes up life, our universe.

But then the day that someone opens your cage and makes you realize there’s a world out there? It changes your life.

We all live in our little cages. The cruelest joke is that we can see how to open the cages of others, but never how to open the cages which have trapped ourselves.

Sometimes I feel like there are two types of people in life. Those who refuse to let go of hope of escape from their own personal cages, and those who resolve to make the best of their caged life, embracing a narrowed vision of the world and convincing themselves that this is all that exists. Sometimes the lines are divided very closely along the division between the logical left brainer and the flighty artistic right brainer. But I’d rather have hope for me. A chance to glimpse what’s out there. Of heaven.

Okay, I’m totally streaming tonight. I’ve been on a strict diet and exercise regime and tonight I let myself have a glass of red wine (for antioxidants!) and here I am. Lightweight drunk. No not really. But that’s my excuse if tomorrow morning, I reread this post and find that I’ve been streaming about inappropriate things again (read: my sex life).

What’s it like hanging out with Geminis? I think if you just keep in mind that all these contradicting personalities are really just different expressions of a multi-directional but overall, integrated being, then it’s okay.

Hey ex boyfriend who recently got in touch with me. Were you referring to me when you mentioned “stormy women?” Well…I never promised you a rose garden…

Speaking of old memories and my going through life on auto-pilot. When Drew and I were breaking up, I told him a couple of times, “You just can’t corral the human heart to where it doesn’t want to go.” What did I mean? Was I telling him that I didn’t love him? Or was I telling him that it was okay to admit that he didn’t love me?

Why is it I can have entire conversations with people and say things that seem loaded with subtext, but I’m the only one who doesn’t get the subtext? Who the hell is using my mouth???

By the way, I made these turkey patties today with ground turkey, fresh chopped basil, cilantro and mint, bread crumbs, garlic, lime and chili garlic sauce, and they turned out really well.

If you’re an old friend of mine who stumbles upon this site, or even if you’re someone who’s been in my life, even casually, who’s hiding in the shadows, drop me a line and say what’s up. A lot of old friends have gotten in touch with me by stumbling upon my site so that’s been really awesome. I like to hear how people’s lives progress past the point in which our lives had connected.

Anyway, I’m off to do something other than sit in front of the computer. Like go into my room and listen to music by candlelight. Yeah, it’s what I like to do. Lay off.

No more games, please…you’re hurting me.

I was having trouble falling asleep as usual last night so I figured I would watch the rest of Notorious C.H.O. At least keep things light, right? At the end of it, she gets really serious and talks about self-esteem and her eating disorder (s). She talks about how her father enforced this need to be thin, showering her with positive attention when she was thin, and acting like she was invisible when she was fat. That was really, really hard to watch, because as much as comics are all about telling jokes, most of them have just excelled in their defense mechanism of using humor and detachment to deal with a lifetime of pain and perceived rejection. And Margaret’s pain while talking about her father was palpable.

This subject struck such a chord for me. Made me so, so very sad. Mothers will nag, but it’s that kind of rejection by a father to a daughter based on physical appearance, that can cut the deepest.

My father came from an environment where the very basic things like security and love were withheld. His mother divorced his father and remarried, thus abandoning her children from the first marriage. By all accounts, my dad took it the hardest. He used to go to her house with her new family and meticulously do all of the housekeeping while her kids from the second marriage sat around acting like he was “the help,” all in hopes of winning her love. But of course, it didn’t work. She’s a cold, selfish woman.

So given that upbringing, you would think that he would be mindful of not perpetuating these negative cycles that can hurt a vulnerable child so much. But thus is the nature of bad emotional/psychological cycles…unless you recognize them and go out of your way to fight them, you perpetuate them.

Growing up, for both my brother and I, food became a touchy subject. We were always anxious about eating, because there was always a risk of suffering a cutting comment directed at us about our weight. Food…it was something we needed, yet sometimes, if our dad was in a sadistic mood, all kinds of issues and mind games came into play. Ironic considering he’s not exactly skinny himself.

There were always the questions of, “Are you still eating?” “Haven’t you had enough?” “You want MORE?!?” Made us feel like pigs if we were hungry.

Sometimes he would bring home food and eat it in front of us without offering. The choice would be…ask him for some, or not. But the risk with asking him for some, would be him saying, “Yeah, keep eating and getting fatter” before giving it to us. But if you were hungry, that was the price you paid. It was often the feeling that he was setting up the situation that way so we, as people dependent on him, would have to beg. So that, as someone who had come from a life of begging for the basics such a mother’s love, he would be in the situation of being the one who has the power to give or withhold. Often I wanted to be proud so I didn’t ask, going hungry, even though I knew that he knew I wanted it, and was so smug about knowing that he was making me ask for it. Kind of like being homeless but being too proud to beg for money even though you need it to survive. And the smug rich people only giving it to you if you show suitable humility. Fucking bullshit.

My brother and I would sneak food when he wasn’t around. Before he came home. After he went to bed. It shouldn’t have been a big deal…eating. But it became this covert thing you did, but were ashamed about doing the whole time. It became this thing we were ashamed of, being hungry. Being fat. Being disdained by our father.

I used to hide food in my room, so that if I was hungry, I could have it without getting caught, without having to deal with any comments that would hurt my feelings, hurt my self-esteem. I remember one year, some ants got into my stash and it was a mess. And he went ballistic, about why anyone would keep food in their bedroom. That was a really bad day.

Years later, living out here, I was going to a therapist. We were talking about other issues (if you’re Asian, you have all kinds of family issues), and she noticed that I always brought up the issue of food…how conscious I was of eating healthy and of everything I ate, and how self-conscious I was about other people judging what I ate, how much I ate, how often I ate. I told her the story about my dad bringing home food and my being too proud and afraid to ask him for some, even though I was hungry. And I remember, her eyes teared up. Trust me, it’s a scary thing when your therapist does that. She told me, “That is so sad.” And I got angry, angry at her for saying that. Because anger was my only defense against that slide into the dark well where all those demons and grievances reside. Because I didn’t want her to tell me it was sad, I didn’t want to feel or understand that it was sad, because once you do, then what? Sad is such a hopeless thing. Vulnerability is such a sad, hopeless thing.

Writing means nothing until it means something to someone else. Emotional defenses of that statement aside, it’s expression existing in a vacuum. It’s the tree falling in the forest with nothing to experience it except itself. Symbols without the symbolized. But the moment it means something to someone else, the moment it strikes a deep chord within an “other,” there within the fabric of that abstract yet deep connection is where the spark that lights the true being of our very existence can be glimpsed.

Sometimes you just want to reach out into that dark unknown and touch someone whose face you don’t even recognize yet.

my insomnia has struck again. i’m so tired but i can’t get to sleep. i’m so tired but i can’t get to sleep. gone from talking to ghosts to being a ghost. but i still have two hours of trying before i get desperate. anyone know of any good stories?

Once a label is on something
It becomes an it
Like it’s no longer alive

It’s like a loss of vision
Or some dark impression
Or a black spot on your eye

If it’s up to you
My little sweet baboo
Through the shouting and the fever
Think of life as queer
Think of it my dear
And some knobs or a fancy tone
From here there is no reason
Baby’s got it made
But it’s not what the life’s about

What is imagination
May become a fact
If we think of it that way
If you want to know
I can tell you now
Oh if you make it through somehow
Or is it best to keep or fall to sleep
It isn’t looking very good to me from here

(what new york couples fight about, morcheeba)

this is one of my favorite songs. to listen to alone in the dark at 3am. which is when i’m usually listening to it lately. you can hear it if you click on the link above (then click on the title. it’ll take a few minutes to download before automatically playing). i put it up on my site for you to listen to, if you guys have never gotten a taste of morcheeba.

According to Brian, “I’ll be in my room watching Margaret Cho and lifting weights” is a really really gay statement.

Check out this site! People send in anonymous confessions. Sometimes hilarious. Sometimes sad. Often bizarre.

By the way, my cousin is a slut. Can I hear an amen?

“Learn to detach…Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent… But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That’s how you are able to leave it… Take any emotion–love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them–you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that love entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.'”
~ Mitch Albom

from Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson

Is it bad that I’m at work and I keep wanting to drink my Purell Instant Hand Sanitizer? I don’t know why but I keep thinking it’s my cup of water. Or maybe my subconscious is telling me something.

What is life when you want to quit your job but you know you can’t because you would kill yourself financially? It seems like most of the world is in that situation. We miss so much of life this way.

There’s a lot of heavy stuff going on in my life lately. When people ask me for advice, ask me to tell them what’s going to happen, I get scared sometimes. Because I feel responsible for what happens once I tell them what I see. What is family, anyway? I’m all kinds of worried today.

Weekend Recap

This weekend I passed on a trip to Vegas with my cousins. One of my cousins is getting married in Vegas, doing the shotgun Elvis thing, since they were planning on getting the certificate anyway before having the actual ceremony sometime in the future, so they figured they may as well just do something fun. Now, it seems kind of foolish that I would pass on this trip since my cousins are wild when it comes to partying, despite the fact that they’re all married. And since my dad has requested that I not go to clubs by myself, this would have been a great opportunity to hit some dance clubs with a solid, fun crew. Who like the good stuff when it comes to drinking (read: Patron!!) and usually cover the bill.

But then I figured, I spent so much money last month that I should probably take things easy this month. And I’m feeling bad about not really doing that much writing this week. But probably the biggest reason of all, is that I know that this situation has all the makings of me going nuts. The last time I hung out with my cousins resulted in some scandalous pictures and a wild night that, if my cousins have indeed failed me and let it get back to my dad, gives him good reason to think what he thinks about my lifestyle. On one hand, I could try to control myself. On the other hand, the truth is I won’t. I do not have a good prudency record when I go out of town. Especially when my cousins serve as my wingmen.

So I passed. And part of me didn’t want to. But part of me knew I should.

Sometimes I wish I could be a guy. Only because, society’s double standards when it comes to certain things are ridiculous. Completely in favor of men. And it pisses me off and frustrates the hell out of me.

So this weekend was pretty quiet. Just perfect. Went to the gym. Read. Watched basketball. Got a lot of writing done. Went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market this morning. I like to look at people’s stuff. Just trying to figure out the stories that they tell about the people they belonged to. Especially old things. You can feel the energy in belongings sometimes.

I picked up some photography prints that were great. What I liked about them, was that the photographer understood loneliness. He captured its essence. And that jived with me. If there’s one way to describe me, it would be “Loneliness Personified.” I’m drawn to lonely people because it’s the frequency of my soul vibration and what I understand. I know how to speak their language, and they welcome me because they can tell I truly understand that deep emptiness that often defies words, but that has such great meaning and purpose. That loneliness feeds my life force. It’s something I thrive on, that makes me seek the deeper meanings of things, to understand. Sometimes I feel like forcing companionship on this plane is just a Band-Aid. You never face the fact that by being compartmentalized inside a human body, you are to a degree, disconnected from the group soul, what it is that we all belong to, from which we came and to which we seek to return. And trying to merge with another person is a ritualized act in an effort to fill that existential emptiness by reconnection, though it’s the equivalent of life as experienced on a stage with actors and affected emotions versus real life. And we know it. We can’t fool ourselves, though we desperately try. It’s synthetic. It’s artificial. It’s ALMOST it. It almost scratches that persistent itch, but not quite. And we don’t know why. So we’re disappointed. But we don’t know why. And then we blame ourselves, our partners, the relationship, this human life that is so unfair. And that attitude, in itself, is unfair.

The problem is absolutely not the need for companionship and support. We all most definitely need that and it is vital to our well-being and our life purposes. But it’s when people cling to each other, expect other people to fill that void, to efface that “lack” deep within them, that things become problematic.

Can’t we accept that it’s not about yourself and other people on this plane, but about your journey? A bigger journey than all that is contained on this little planet, third from the sun? The most dangerous thing about looking for things on this plane to fill that void is that it’s so easy to become tragically complacent about our deeper search. To ignore the journey.

I’ve found myself to be quite reluctant in parting ways with loneliness. I feel like, losing my deep-seated loneliness would be like losing my dark, brooding companion who keeps me safe during the darkest hour of night, who drives me to dive into the deepest parts of people’s souls, through their pain and suffering, to bring back the knowledge that would bring them peace. It feels like losing my loneliness would in essence, be losing my life purpose. And I wouldn’t be able to live without that.

11/12 Recap — Breaking Celebrity Gossip!!

Okay, so Brian and I decided to go see Kinsey over at the Century City Mall AMC. We grab some food at the food court and we’re talking about how Peter Sarsgaard has full-frontal in this movie. Brian was excited about it and I said, “What if he has an ugly dong?” Brian said, “That would suck if it’s ugly.” I said, “Well, still, you’d rather see his than Zach Braff’s.”

So we get into the theater and I was supposed to find seats while Brian got a soda. The theater is filling up quickly so I grab these two seats at the end of the middle row next to a girl and a guy in a baseball cap. The guy looks up as I sit down and it’s…Zach Braff. With Mandy Moore.

So I sat next to Mandy and had to endure them touching and stroking each other’s hands and legs (and inner thighs). And then the making out. Oh God, the making out. Whitney…if you thought watching Garden State was hard for me, imagine THAT.

The best thing in the world was when the previews started and of course, which preview should come on but the one for Closer …starring Natalie Portman. Who, for all of you not in the loop, was rumored to be dating Zach after Garden State wrapped. Oh my God, did my evil side want to lean over and say obnoxiously to them, “Ohmigod! This much be like….SOOO awkward for you!!” But of course, it was awkward. Natalie on a stripper’s pole, seducing the camera. As Zach had his hand on Mandy’s leg and Mandy clung to him.

By the way, Kinsey…good movie. Very funny. Very provocative insights about sex and love. Right up my robot alley.