Echo

understandings

the thing about dating someone when so much is carried on over im, is that you become dependent on words. words to convey realities, to give you glimpses of a multi-dimensional universe that you can’t at the moment perceive with any other senses. you trust that the psychically imaged/constructed/projected/perceived universe of this person is exactly the one that exists behind these string of words.

and for someone whose livelihood is completely built upon words, it makes me realize how inadequate words are for capturing and reflecting entire universes, realities and understandings.

i’m making too many mistakes with words, because i’m barely there as i write them. my head is somewhere else, and i’m perceiving and painting realities that may or may not exist. i’ve learned it’s important to paint them positively, or sometimes people around you suffer, perhaps due to their own private lives, perhaps due to your influence. so you have to be very careful, and only outlet your negativities to someone who’s strong. but after a while, it’s not hard to be positive. you just have to trust that you’ll be taken care of by a force greater than you. and whatever happens is just a part of all that happens, so you will be big enough to accept it.

it’s not about the result. that you were ultimately able to control everything. it’s that in earnest, with optimism, you tried.

and so i’ve committed myself to that vision, that position, that if you focus your energy, your projections are expansive. and i never again want to hear anyone call me selfish again because everything. every single thing i’ve ever discovered about life and how life really works, i’ve shared it with you. You. Whoever you are. It doesn’t matter to me. You’re all You.

but how honest do you want me to be? how much do you want to recognize me? it’s scary when you wonder if i’m you isn’t it?

so i’ll tell the stories you like so much. because they’re all true.

let’s start with the trees in the forest.

david. the only one i can’t get inside of and see. it drives me crazy but it tests my ability to have faith. imagine holding a really hard yoga position for an infinite amount of time…you have no idea when you’re allowed to let go, but you try to be really zen about it and hold on until you know it’s time not to. this is what it feels to my psychic energy. so despite not knowing what’s along the bend, i force myself to have faith in a reality i can’t see. because the problem is, i see everything.

since meeting me, david can now remember his dreams, whereas before sleep was an endless black hole. his dreams are mostly positive, but he sees them as what he believes are events of the future. the thing that makes me happy is that he’s remembering them, because this is significant.

my brother. needs his independence. i fear a future where he proves if he can fend for himself, because i fear the answer if it is not a safe one, but i know that by constantly watching and projecting for him, i’m not letting him try. it’s very hard to let him go.

my father. is finally happy. in that phone call where i threatened to kill him, was when things changed. let me quickly explain before you think i’m a psycho chick from a lifetime tv-movie. i got tired of him being jealous of my mom’s success in their company and when he declared he was going to sabotage her. i used reason at first and when i realized he was going to do it anyway without my support, i laid it down. it was done over the phone, but it was medieval. it’s like i whipped out a sword and my armor and i angrily declared a duel. except he was wearing nothing but pajamas. and i went to town telling him don’t you dare sabotage her. you started your own company and stepped aside so she could start making some decisions, so don’t you dare sabotage her until she gets a chance to prove if her decisions work. i told him i was sorry that his mom was such a horrible person to him, because she started her own life but didn’t have enough room in her heart for him, but who cares. who cares about what one selfish woman thinks. just because she didn’t have the heart to love him didn’t mean that he wasn’t deserving of love. i told him about the prison. the one that we lock ourselves into, and even though the door is open, we’re terrified of walking out that door. i told him too many people sit in this prison they’ve made for themselves, and just wait for that door to lock so they can be angry and say that they never had a chance to get out anyway. but the thing, is, the door is not fucking locked. you can leave ANY. TIME. so why are you still sitting in it when you have a wife that wants to love you, kids that love you, and friends and family who would never say anything less than you are a kind, generous, wonderful human being? he got angry and tried to tell me that no one loved him and i told him i needed him to stand in the mirror and say, I am a good husband. I am a good person. I am someone worthy of love. I kept repeating it over and over like a mantra, and he protested at first then started weeping, demanding, why are you doing this to me??? i told him, because you need to walk out of your prison. you need to walk out of your prison, and start living the life that you always wanted, because it’s right there waiting for you. i started repeating this over and again. he told me i was a bad daughter and that’s when i blew.

if i EVER find out you’ve been going around calling me a bad daughter, i will hunt you down and kill you. if you tell ANYONE that i am a bad daughter after everything i’ve done for you, after everything i’ve given to you, after i made my life a miserable shrine for you for so long so you could see what it’s like for someone you love to be with men who hated themselves, then you don’t deserve to have me in your life. i don’t NEED you in my life. i’m only here because i WANT you in my life, but if you think i’m a bad daughter, then i’m not sharing what an amazing person i am to someone who doesn’t deserve to be around me.

and then for the first time in my life, i hung up on him.

months later, i look at him now and he’s happy to see me. it’s a secret we share.

he’s finally free.

my mom. great for hugs. great for comfort. can’t touch her. while in taiwan, we were sitting on this beautiful patio in the mountains above a harbor having afternoon tea. my aunt’s friend bluntly comments, “I think in this lifetime, your mom’s greatest love is work.”

i actually find it amusing but i kind of sigh, good-naturedly. i’ve frankly explained to david that my mom’s first love is her company, and the people around her have spent their lifetimes coming to terms with that. but saying it in front of me is kind of like saying, “Hey, your boyfriend seems to really love his wife.”

edison. freakishly smart kid who can devour knowledge. they need to feed him as much as possible. he’s capable of doing great things. his dad is a scorpio who knows magic.

i have a musician connection. i feel a comforting warmth inside me when i think of him and it makes me peaceful to know he’s out in the world. i’ve thought a lot of times that i would like to get closer to him, but the only thing is i worry that he’ll try to sleep with me. which is the problem i face when getting closer to people sometimes. they always want to cross that physical boundary with me and that line destroys something that is actually stronger and more innocent, but transcendental. and it always makes things complicated. i just wish someone would try it out without crossing that line, because it could really be a powerful thing.

speaking of d. she was in love with me. brian thought i was evil for seducing her, but i felt like i didn’t go out of m
y way to get her attention outside of revealing who i was. but i didn’t want to sleep with her because i wasn’t interested in her body but in the end, when i flat out said no, she got angry and betrayed me to her bulldog lesbian wife, claiming there was something going on. i was a little traumatized by it because i did nothing but try to help her and explain the power of projection for healing. but she wanted me to be a crutch, and she pulled me into a drama that was negative and dangerous for me. i refused to carry on anything in secrecy (if we’re friends, why do i have to hide anything?, i asked her before hanging up), and never heard from her or her angry wife again. sometimes a memory will pop in my head and i’ll wonder where she is in her life. just as i’m about to imagine, i realize i can’t tell if i want a positive reality or a negative reality because i’m still hurt, but then i force myself to not be curious, so i don’t imagine anything at all.

communication is being withheld with my childhood connection. it’s okay though. like i told him. it’s okay. it’s like a river hidden in the forest of the mountains. you come to it, and float little paper boats away whenever you want. that’s the beauty of it.

bruce lee in the light. bruce lee in the darkness. tigers have two colors.

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