Echo

yesterday was a significant day.

i was to meet david at work later and as i got ready, i remembered the first day i came back to amsterdam in may. it was after the first trip through europe when we’d met, and this was the first time we’d be face to face after he’d followed me to berlin. after dropping off my things, he took me to a park. we talked about a range of subjects from movies to philosophy to politics. then the talk turned to names and the power of names. i told him that i believed labels had power as well as what words we took to represent ourselves, so names did have significance.

he asked me, so you’re telling me, if i’d been named…what…adrian when i was born, i would have had a different life?

i remember being shocked.

why did you say the name adrian?

he looked annoyed that i was getting off topic. i don’t know, it was the first name that came to me.

it’s funny that you chose that name. adrian’s the same as david, i said. they’re both (how much should i say…)…princes. so adrian would be the same energy as david.

he did look genuinely surprised and took a moment to think, but we quickly went off topic.

it was really significant to me though.

yesterday i was getting ready and decided to calculate the numbers in the name adrian, and it was 11. and then i realized something. david inherited his 11 from a step-father who is his greatest sun and his greatest shadow. adrian needs to become a 22. and then something hit me, that felt too irrational to say outloud, but i could tell it’s not something i hadn’t thought about before.

i headed to david’s shop. as he and i were talking, i asked him about that day in the park when he asked me what if his name had been another name. he remembered the conversation but not the name. he asked me if this had anything to do with name of something we were supposed to produce. i asked him why and he told me that on his way to work, he was thinking that maybe it’s not specifically us that’s important, but who we are supposed to bring into this world.

from both the right and the left traveling independently of each other, everything seemed to be coming to the same place.

breakthroughs

one by one, we take turns giving up our secrets. it’s like having pop quizzes from the universe all the time. we could be going along, having the greatest day, and then something will tear in the fabric of reality and a dossier will fly in in the form of an issue, and suddenly, deep internal buttons are mashed and we have to be quick on our feet in figuring out what the lesson is, what is being asked of us, and what we need to do to complete the challenge and collect the reward. we’ve gotten really good about instinctively perceiving whose lesson it is when this happens, and the other person has to serve as an anchor of sorts and guide the other person through. what might seem like a sudden, white-hot explosion of emotional confrontation to an outside observer, is the tearing open of an old, poorly-sutured wound, and suddenly, we will both be at work digging in the wound for all the darkness that can be grabbed and thrust up to the light, so the darkness loses it’s power and teeth.

one of the biggest things i’m learning in all this is that sometimes, things that hurt you or confused you or traumatized you stay around you covered in an emotionally-radioactive slime, even if you’ve buried it so deep that you don’t even remember they’re there. sometimes they aren’t even that big of a deal, like having felt slighted by someone years ago, or having been unfairly accused of something when you’re a kid. the difference is, if it bothered you and you never told anyone, somehow that gives it a festering power, turning small things into lumps inside you that create tension and incongruity. sometimes all it takes is the act of telling someone, and within that act, you discover if the thought or experience or event actually had more negative or positive power than you realized.

the key has always been secrets with the human psyche.

the lives they lead, the underground societies they build when they’re buried so deep beneath the surface.

mushrooms

sometimes i work in a shop that sells mushrooms.

i don’t actually work there, though i sit behind the counter and will help customers and carry out transactions in the register like i do. it was easier to just help people who often had tenuous grasps of english rather than explain, i don’t really work here even though it might appear that i do because i’m sitting behind the counter. but david’s the manager and most days, after i’ve done my writing in a cafe, i’ll hang out here and watch him work.

david asked me not to try mushrooms because he said i’m too intense. i am interested because everyone tells me it’s a highly spiritual experience, but i trust him and it’s not so important to me. but people will ask me about the mushrooms, and so i regurgitate the things i’ve heard the other salespeople say (mexicans for beginners, take half a box for a medium high, full for a strong high but it’s best to take half a box, wait for an hour before you take the rest. take sugar if it gets too intense, and if you’re a jackass who comes in asking for the strongest shit and buy the ecuadorians even though you’re not ready to handle them, then i’ll probably see you squirming in the street miserably somewhere when i get off work). i realize it’s not that different from my job selling scanners. i hated those things because they never really worked and i didn’t know how to set them up. but not having experience using them didn’t stop me from doing well selling them.

we get a lot of italians and french, but the french have this annoying habit of only speaking french, so it’s really hard for me to help them as i don’t know a lick of french. helping a french person often entails picking up random objects and asking them, “this?” or “this?” until they wander around the store pointing at objects until i finally figure out what they’re looking for. but for the most part, people speak english.

you see a wide variety of characters walk through the doors. most of them are here for the mushrooms or the salvia (something else david says i shouldn’t try), but a lot of them are just tourists who are wandering around, looking for an experience or someone to talk to.

there’s an old man who comes in quite often, and will always want to talk to david. he’s well into his 70’s wearing thick glasses, fishing cap, tie-dye shirt, bermuda shorts, wool socks and hiking shoes. his skin is a sickly gray as are his teeth, and he’s hunchbacked with a slight limp, though his body looks strangely powerful. his gaze is a combination of intensity and an undercurrent of something else, something that makes me think of a gift-wrapped present from a serial killer like the package in se7en.

he comes in with a girl who could be anywhere from 14 to 25. it’s hard to tell because her build is slight, her face is childish and vacant, and she’s wearing red pants pulled up high around her midsection, a long-sleeved black t-shirt with electric blue butterflies on it, her hair braided in one thick rope behind her head, and a pink headband with a single feather in the front sticking erect into the air. she follows him like a lost puppy, and i suspect she’s mildly retarded or suffering from severe emotional/psychological issues because she carries with her a dazed look of childlike dependency.

he asks me if we’re out of hawaiians and i say yes. even though she is standing right next to him and in range to clearly hear me, she doesn’t react until he turns to her and repeats, “they’re out of hawaiians.” her face twists into a scowl and she stomps her foot impetuously like a child told that she can’t have a cookie before dinner. he has to lead her away as she sulks.

they wait until david is behind the register again and they buy one stick of musk-scented incense. the man tells david that it’s good to see him again, and that they’re back for a while. he says they come a couple times a year for “research.” i’m writing everything he says furiously in my notebook, because i don’t want to forget this guy, because i need to remember this guy, so i can spend time later to think about him, thinking about what the deal is between this old, hippie-like man with creepy energy and this girl who trails after him like an abused dog, never letting him get more than 3 feet away. david knows what i need so he asks him, what kind of research. the guy says he’s researching various ways to grow weed and he’s been coming to amsterdam for 11 years, and she’s been coming for 4. david looks at her but as she has the whole time, she stares vacantly at the ground and never makes eye contact, though she’s tied to this man as if by an invisible leash.

the man is looking at david with a glimmer in his eye, and says, “amsterdam has always been good to me.” david doesn’t react and the man stares at him then repeats again, “i always have a good time in amsterdam.” he lets the statement hang, and i can see his eyes adding a whispered, you know what i mean…… and the thing is, we don’t. maybe we do, but we don’t want to let him know that we do. he tells david that he’ll see him soon, and he leaves, the girl trailing behind him. i watch her braids and lone feather disappear out the door.

this man disturbs david but he doesn’t know why, so i question him about him. the guy has been coming for years and at some point, he comes in nearly every day, always with the girl attached to his side and always just buying one stick of incense. but even if david’s busy or there are other salespeople, he always waits for david to help him, only lets david ring him up, and always tries to talk to david. as david hears himself answer these questions, he gets more agitated. there is obviously something subversive in the relationship. whether this guy is a pedophile or a sexual predator, he has power over this girl and this girl is completely submissive to him, even though she clearly has some sort of mental or psychological/emotional issue that makes her not right.

but being in amsterdam and not having any point of reference to pass judgments about social norms, i was able to see that things aren’t so black and white. say this creepy, hunchbacked man with sharp, broken teeth does have a fucked up pedophile, sexually-dominant relationship with a girl who’s not exactly all there. but it occurred to me, if this girl has no other family, if she has no one to take care of her, if this man weren’t taking care of her to a certain extent, what would become of her? if he were arrested or taken away, would she end up in an institution or worse, in the streets? is she better off with a creepy old man who seems intent on hinting something to david that david doesn’t want to know?

here in amsterdam, people don’t hide things the way they do in the us–they don’t hide themselves, they don’t hide what they’re about. but as i start to see both dark truths and light truths, i become more and more aware that there is no black and white right or wrong. there is no easy way to say that something that is ugly and dark is wrong, or something that seems on morally upstanding is necessarily right. there is only what is, and the reality of the people who live those lives.

it bothered david a lot. and i think when he realized that this man seemed intent on singling him out to connect with him, it bothered him in regards to what this man saw in him that made him think that david might want to hear what little secret he wanted to share, whether if he thought david was a potential victim who would know about men like him, or potentially someone who would understand him.

sexual predators are good about smelling vulnerability, the lost look in the eyes of children without parental protection. he obviously wants something from david, senses something about him, his emotional sensitivity or perhaps the vulnerable child in a chaotic world that david had once been. he w
ants david to listen to him, to know him. he wants something from david.

i tell david to ignore him, to never let this guy know that he knows what the guy’s about, because he’s a fucked up old man who just wants to play games. but secretly, i hope that man never crosses a line because i think david will really hurt him.

“we were having a good day, but then in the evening, something went pear-shaped.”

-david (re: Friday, 8/22, as trying to remember what happened on what day turned into us mapping out our emotional highs and lows)

privately

before i left, dr. shakir asked me to record all of the details of my life, down to how often i was having sex, into a journal so he and i could track things. my mom said he was almost skipping when he came out of examination room, he looked so happy.

really? do people think it’s really that easy to get me to spill?

well, i’ve been trying to keep track of things, though i’m very very lazy because my life is so easy that every day, something new or amazing or heart-wrenching happens. i remember days by moments that seem to all run together, rather than dates and times. only that:

you would not believe how good it is to be with the only other person you accept as yourself.

you would not believe how powerful, how painful, how elevatingly emotional it is to be with the only other person you accept as yourself.

i had my first day of work today.

first time getting close to people after having been incubating in david’s cocoon.

i couldn’t believe what the universe had prepared for me.

my job is to wear an orange t-shirt in a high traffic intersection that proclaims i’m a tourist information provider and i am more than happy to provide you conversation or knowledgeable advice about amsterdam, or whatever else you might need, provided that you speak english. sometimes i would convince them to come to our comedy show. if there were ever a dream job for someone whose greatest love is talking to strangers, i would die of a spontaneous orgasm.

my partner was a tall 25 year-old from vancouver named neil. my new boss ken told me he was their top seller. he makes me feel like we’re teenagers who have lived down the street together since we were 6. we set up in a busy intersection by the church next to the Anne Frank house, set up our map on wheels and immediately, people would be drawn to our giant map, even though they held the same identical map in their hands which obviously has done them no good. this city confuses everyone senseless. but yet it had no problem employing me, someone who has been wandering around on a space cake morning coffee routine for 3 weeks, with ridiculous amounts of good food and even more ridiculous amounts of good sex disabling any kind of sensible perception of direction. yet someone has trusted me to help these people get to where they needed to go.

so you kind of learn. we were supposed to assess the english speakers walking by and help them. anyone who wanted more, you gave them more. one woman wanted to know about my skin and wanted skin like mine, so i gave her advice, though i don’t think i have particularly good skin. but she seemed happy about having the conversation and i was happy to have it. neil thought it was funny that a couple from miami gave me a 1 euro tip for making a big production of pulling out the map and marking our position, just to draw a dot next to the circle because the place was a few hundred yards around the corner. i did it mostly because it amused me, but americans always feel obligated to tip. just ask yourself how you feel about having to tip when you buy a bottle of water from starbuck’s.

he insisted on sharing his food with me, making me an amazing sandwich of pickled herring, onions and pickles. maybe i just liked it because i’d never had it before, and with me, new is almost always good. he wanted to know why i was here and i repeated the same story, that i’m here because i have a boyfriend here and am living here for a few months. but hours later when he asks again, i admit i’m a writer. i tell him the story of how i quit my job and found david, and we talked about how sometimes when a man just knows, he just knows. he tells me he’s 25 and i tell him that’s beautiful and to have fun because the right thing will be waiting for him when he’s ready to take that on. he likes that he has complete freedom right now, that he’s only been living in this city the last couple of months because he came out to england for a cousin’s wedding and he just decided that he may as well stay here for a while since he was already in europe. i haven’t yet admitted in magic.

we pack up and we’ve made 16 euros in tips. we split it and we ride home. we talk about our lives, where we’re from. he’s from vancouver, having taught english in korea for a while. he would like to move on to teach english in eastern europe, maybe the czech or croatia. my heart jumps because i’ve always wanted to visit croatia. i admitted that i was an exec in a software company and without realizing i was going to, i said fuck it to my entire life and just decided i only wanted to be happy.

we had 2 hours to kill before our meeting so i rode my bike home after dropping off the mobile. i went to my place in the red light, and saw 2 girls in their windows. just their legs for a brief second as i rode by, but it still bothered me. 50 euros for a suck and fuck. i like to say it because it hurts so i often find myself repeating it to myself throughout the day.

was late to the meeting somehow. just sitting outside, afraid to approach. when i went in, i was apologetic and people were sitting around, joking. someone said, all people from california are crazy. they were laughing about it. and when i asked him why?, they all laughed. ken said, they were all just talking about where you’re from before you came. later, that same guy said that ken had mentioned where my boyfriend worked. he must have overheard me when i was talking to neil in the back when we’d first met to get the mobile. i wondered why they were talking about me.

they were going to meet up for a beer after the meeting and neil told me it’s what they do to get to know each other. i didn’t have my bike, because the weirdest thing happened today. the lock just would not unlock when i needed to come back for the meeting, so i had to walk. i saw neil outside and asked him how far leidseplein was. he said i could follow him and i told him that i didn’t have my bike. he said it was far but i said it was cool because i’m a very fast walker. he thought about it and asked me if i wanted to ride two. i would have to sit on the plastic ledge behind his seat. he said he’s been able to do it alright so far, and i said i’d never done it before. he handed me his backpack and umbrella, took off pedaling, and i had to jump on the back and throw my arm around his waist, hanging on for dear life. we rode this way and even though it took a lot of energy to stay balanced, hold 2 bags with one hand and a guy’s waist with the other while keeping my both my feet off the ground, out of the stokes and away from the pedal, we had a really pleasant conversation. he told me about his apartment, how it’s a converted classroom in an old school but it’s really amazing. he said he got lucky when he placed an ad on an expat website. lucky. he’s another one of those lucky guys, like david.

when we hit a major bump and we had to stop, he said he was amazed i lasted for as long as i did. we ended up walking together the rest of the way, talking. i’m really glad that he’s the one i got paired up with. getting along is easy with him. at the bar, i sit with a couple of the other promoters i recognized from the meeting and meet a few new staff. it seems that everyone knows i’m out here because of a boyfriend. i wonder if i’m going to be perceived as that girl who wants everyone to know she has a boyfriend which i find obnoxious, but it keeps coming up when people ask why i’m here and i know they’re expecting to hear me say (as with so many people), i’m here for the drugs. but but maybe that’s what i’m saying because in this realm, being out here for a boyfriend is my cover story. i have been secretive about being a writer. sometimes people get self-conscious when they’re being photographed. same goes when people think you’re really watchin
g/listening to them, and you might be writing this all down somewhere.

it’s time for me to go home. there’s a clean, sharp-cheeked guy with sparkling eyes and an earphone in one ear who has switched to my side of the tables. he’s been listening in to our conversations for a while. we had shared a moment when we had looked at each other and our pupils dilated. something primal inside of us both snarled in attention, but i smirked as soon as i felt it, and his eyes narrowed though he smiled in recognition, too. i think he works here so we will eventually meet, but he’s looking at me like he’d like to know how fast i can run, if i would challenge him enough to make it worthwhile to try to catch me. this energy is too dangerous to even invite in, but it never fails to pluck of wire of temptation. when i stand up to leave, i say goodbye, not making eye contact with him. neil is working a festival this weekend even though he doesn’t know what it is. i tell him it’s a pretty big festival and he says that he’s free on sunday and would like to check it out, so maybe he could meet up with my boyfriend and i.

i can’t see david being very happy if i’m making new male friends. especially if they’re breaking our partnership bubble. it is because he’s jealous, but it’s not unwarranted. i have a tendency to recognize my soulmates. and those connections tend to run deep, though i try hard to honor life’s commitments (or not make any) while being true to the nature and purpose of the connection. it’s a lot to ask a partner to understand. but another reason i know he’ll be unhappy. he always knows which guys are being affected by me, just like i know which girls are being affected by him. when i connect with someone, there’s a kind of love there. platonic, but still love. and that can be uncomfortable to see coming out of someone you want a total heart-body-mind-soul commitment from. but the feeling is mutual; i have to admit, i get more jealous than i ever imagined it was possible for me to get. so maybe for us to have the type of relationship we have, we have to make certain compromises. but i’m okay with it. i’m willing to not impose judgment and see where it goes because i’ve tried being in control and living a certain way that people have told me to live. now i just want to see where this is going.

amsterdam

i have been starting posts and not being able to finish them, both from distraction and the difficulties of internet connection here. the thing i love about this city is that there are no starbucks. every day, i stop at a new cafe or bar or coffeehouse to sit and write or stare off into space or make new friends. every day is a new experience.

it’s hard for me to imagine my old life anymore. the me i lived as seems so far away, almost belonging to a character in a book i had once read but can’t remember the title of. all i know is that i’ve never felt so complete, never felt so much at peace, never felt so much of the world as within it.

i remember a conversation my mom and i once had. my life has always been difficult–difficulties fitting into groups, personal conflicts with peers, confusing persecution from adults. one of my first schoolteachers told my mom that i’m too fast for the girls, but the boys are too rough for me. i was good at sports, but it seemed that the better i was, the more committed i was, the more other girls (and coaches sometimes) resented me. i’d been singled out before by authority figures, from a girl scouts leader who gunned after me always telling me i was in trouble (she once accused me of something and i wasn’t even part of that activity! and i only got lucky because another scout mother confronted her and told her i was in her group and not even in the room) to a high school spanish teacher who would call me out and accuse me of behavioral problems i didn’t understand. in hindsight, i think these experiences made me stronger and forced me to find a unique path and perspective. i’ve always been stoic about moving forward and accepting challenges as inevitable and thus, mandatory. but i remember one day last year, my mom said that she thought that if i had grown up in taiwan, i would have probably had more confidence and been a leader. she said that growing up in our small town, i had such a strong independent personality and a will to succeed that it was hard to hide it from smaller people because on top of it, i didn’t look like them.

i would hate to think that race has anything to do with anything, but i do think that certain small minded societies will use certain criteria to judge people so that they can justify their prejudices. in england they use class. in the us they use race. in india they use the caste system. i know these are broad statements, but the fact is, sometimes people don’t like other people who come into the world young and believe in something, perhaps are already aware of a belief in themselves, and for the average person who uses external factors to tell them who they are, this can be disconcerting that there are people who exist who seem to generate their own power from within.

i guess i never realized how uncomfortable i had been. i lived in la where i was clearly unhappy with the mentality, the competitiveness, the detachment and the shallowness of the people, but i couldn’t see myself being happy anywhere else. even going to school in michigan, i ran into people who were petty and seemed to find ways to try to make me feel bad about myself, doubt myself.

but here in amsterdam, i feel good. i feel special. i feel like i can be me, and people either appreciate it or they leave me alone. no one has yet gone out of their way to push me down, or put me in whatever place they feel i should be in. and because of that, i am starting to reveal myself and realize just how much strength and energy i’ve hidden from the world.

this city is like venice but less haunted with canals and old world architecture. so many people are tourists from so many places around the world, and the people who live there are often tourists who somehow ended up sticking around so this place is eclectic and understanding. it’s like there are so many different types of people here, that the diversity makes it too hard to create judgments so people leave it alone. i look at the way people dress and some of it’s out there and some of it’s very individual. there’s no status quo so there’s no point of reference to say, this is acceptable and this is not. the dutch are very straightforward and in some ways rude–you should see how put out some servers in restaurants can get when you ask them to bring you anything. but by the same coin, they are honest and as long as you are not bullshitting and being real with them, they respect you and leave you alone.

i’ve realized i’ve never felt beautiful anywhere else. i don’t care what people say about my looks. my beauty comes from something intangible that i feel people either don’t notice, don’t understand or feel threatened by. but here, i don’t hide my energy and people see it. they don’t stop me because they think, that’s a hot girl. strangers stop me to tell me they “see” me, and i know what that means. i am myself and i am happy and that happiness and integrity within my being glows and it uplifts people who touch it. the other day, i saw an asian woman walking with her white boyfriend. they both looked to be in their late 40’s, and they walked without speaking. she looked a like a person lost in a personal fog, so when she looked up, i smiled at her. she looked surprised at first, then smiled back really happily. her boyfriend had gotten a few steps ahead of her, so she quickened her pace to catch up to him. i saw her say something to him and then turn around and point at me. i smiled again and she smiled back, waving shyly.

it’s like that a lot. i see people who are “turned off,” like they’re automatically going through the motions but not really alive, and i smile at them and talk to them, and then something happens. there’s life in their eyes. it’s so much easier to do here because people will accept you. i do this in la and either they try to infect me with their own dark poison, or they are suspicious of my motives. i was put on this earth and through a difficult life to build my conviction in the power of good, and to understand how i can dedicate my positive, healing energy. it makes me feel good, it makes me feel like me that i am finally in a place where people accept it and they don’t try to destroy me when they realize i can do it.

i live with david in his beautiful apartment that he’s remodeled himself. it’s important for him to express his love through his home, so he always has flowers around and makes sure that i am comfortable where i live. he’s also a ridiculously good cook. i also have an apartment in the red light district that is a cave. it’s dark, it’s got ninja mosquitoes that harass me like you wouldn’t believe (21 bites so far in only a week and these bastards love going for my feet which is fucked up) and not all of the lights work. but i love it because it has a large window facing the canal and a ledge where i can sit, watching people pass by. it’s the only building with graffiti on the street, and it looks a bit new york. people don’t always notice me, but once in a while, someone will look up and make eye contact. i know that sitting in front of a window in the red light district has certain implications, but i would like to think that i bring a more introspective, poetic element to the fucked up hell i see as the red light district.

i hate the red light district. i hate it more than i can put into words. there is an energy there that goes beyond just the things it holds, an energy that allows darkness in. i can walk around the city (and i walk a good 4-5 miles a day), and the city has a very specific energy, a very open, tolerant and even positive energy, but i cross over into the red light and something happens to people. where on the other side, people will say hi politely, be happy to help you with directions if you even look mildly lost, or even stop to have polite conversation and offer nuggets of wisdom, when you cross over, there’s this sickness that gets into people. men will harass me and grab at m
e when i go by. there’s a look in people’s eyes, like they can’t see me anymore beyond an idea, something broken, and wretched and depraved. these men are tourists, sometimes with their families in tow, sometimes a part of a tour group. it’s an infection, like murky parasite-infested water converted into a silent airborne disease. i’ve found ways to get to my cave by avoiding the majority of the area. i think it’s evil.

as for david and i, things are the way they should be. i know i’d been obsessed with creating a smokescreen about our relationship, having even kept him a complete secret to my family with my birthday party being the first time they ever met him, having to figure out who he is to me. i think that’s the way it is with me, that whole venus in the 12th house thing, that it’s important for me to keep the things that matter most to me a secret, particularly when most of my relationships are karmic and really hard to explain in terms of normal human relationships. i think i spun the biggest smokescreen of my life around david, to the point that sometimes i wondered if i had become pathological with the deflecting and misleading. but i think it was important for me that people didn’t know so they couldn’t nail us down or try to intepret or judge. david and i knew within that first day what we were. the rest was us testing each other to make sure, since there are many types of karmic connections that are powerful and magnetic, but the type we suspected we were was something that was very important and something that we had each been waiting for.

imagine this. imagine being born different–born in a way that drew admiration from some and scorn from others. imagine having been born with knowledge you shouldn’t have, knowledge that others didn’t seem to have, and learning the hard way through youth, that you had to keep this knowledge a secret until the day it was right to reveal it. imagine always feeling like having been born into a battlefield and being forced to fight in a war you didn’t understand or believe in, but always trying to find your way back home even though you didn’t know where home was, just knowing that deep down, you would recognize it when you got there.

imagine growing up in the darkest of nights, where storms of rage and human emotion from the adults you were tied to crashed around you, but under the reprieve of night, you would listen to the echoes within the silence, hoping to hear something that would give you proof of life. you are always praying, even at an age where you had yet to learn about god and religion and the wars humans wage over him, praying to an entity bigger than you and everything as far as you could see and feel, and believing that he could hear you and that he believes that you exist, just as strongly as you believe that he exists. somehow you know you serve him, and that he is the only one you will ever answer to. you live a stoic life of dedication and a resolute determination to always follow the path that appears before you without question, but you ask him for a sign, some proof if he’s happy with your service that the soothing hand on your forehead in the middle of the night was his, that the faint lyrics underneath the rush of the echoes were his and you are not as crazy as people seem to want you to believe.

and then imagine one night, as you listened to the echoes, you suddenly felt a beacon appear–not so much heard or seen, but just felt as as a physical entity as solid as if perceived by sight. and as you had always promised, you followed it even though it completely disrupted the life you had built on the physical plane of reality, followed it until you found a stranger hiding himself in the most unlikely of places, a stranger whom you recognized immediately, and who recognized you. because despite your opposite corners of the world, you had shared the same dreams, heard the same voice, served the same being and always had faith that there was someone out there who completely understood the flavor and frequency of loneliness because from somewhere in the darkest of nights, came a pulsing light in the horizon that made us believe there was someone out there who we could finally tell our secret to. the thing was, each of us couldn’t believe the other person was a real life person and not a spiritual being. and it took some time for each of us to believe that we had really found each other, that this was real.

we’ve been like this from the beginning, laying in bed for hours outlining each others features and body with our fingertips, everything so familiar but yet so new. i tell him that i’m happy he’s not bald, because i would have recognized and loved him whatever manifestation he came in but i’m happy he has a full head of hair that i can run my fingers through. sometimes he looks at me and whispers, i can’t believe you’re really here. the scent of our skin reminds of happy memories entire mountains and histories away, and when we curl up with our bodies intertwined fitting perfectly into each other, we know this is home–we’d both spent our lives searching for it without ever realizing it wasn’t a place but a person. the biggest challenge so far is reconciling our human lives and personal histories, and helping each other heal the wounds of this lifetime. we both affect other people positively and powerfully, sometimes magically, and we know that now that we’re reunited, there will be a greater purpose. but for now, we’re just enjoying having found each other, and finally being able to tell the secrets we’ve each held since birth that we always knew could only be told to one other very specific person. i am relieved to finally be able to open up my most guarded chamber and give him the things that belong to him that i’ve been holding for him. he has unlocked the same for me.

my life these days are filled with an emotion that lies somewhere between unadulterated happiness, relief, a rewarded faith in a higher being and an excitement about the next stage of purpose. i don’t know what the universe’s plans are for us. i don’t even know if it will let us stay together in a human partnership. a part of me has always worried about separation, but david tells me that we’ve always been good about finding each other, and as long as we re-enter the world with that faith that we have always managed to find each other, there’s nothing to worry about. all i know is that i’m happy.

i’m finally home.

my mind is obsessive. when added with a strong imagination, sometimes a bad thought gets in and it doesn’t let go, eating my mind alive.

i can’t seem to go an entire day without thinking about it. i don’t know how to make my mind let go.

am having the most vivid dreams of my life. david and i are on the same wavelength, picking up on each other’s obscure thoughts.

i told him about the prism thing that had been hovering by my bed in the middle of the night last year. we passed an art gallery after lunch yesterday and the artist based his work on sacred geometry. we walked around and then thanked the proprietor and walked out. she locked the door behind us, closing the store. as we walked down the front steps, we realized there was a downstairs installation. we were looking at it, then looked back at the woman, locking up. she saw us and knew that we’d just realized there was a downstairs, so she smiled and waved us in. it was really nice of her. downstairs, the centerpiece looked like the top view of the thing i had seen next to my bed, just more simplified and the wrong color–shades of red instead of energetic beams of blue-green-purple light, like spiderwebs shimmering with an ethereal energy. that’s the closest thing i’ve seen yet to describe the thing that was next to my bed, i told him. it’s just the wrong color scheme and doesn’t show exactly how complex it was. he sat down on a bench in front of the artwork. that’s pretty amazing, he said.

we left and he carried me on his back as he walked through the cobblestone streets back to our place. sometimes we have pristine moments like this where we both know that this is nothing new–we’ve lost and found each other through many lifetimes so all we do is appreciate that we’re together. sometimes, we have to go to work, like training partners pushing each other so that we can heal this lifetime’s wounds.

good:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=65911

facebook

for some reason it confounds me so i only interact when people write personal messages.

i was surprised when i got a request from a girl i knew in college. we’d all hung out in the same group in the dorms and we called her ma. it was like she really took care of us in a quiet way, even though we were all the same age. i got to see her a few times at weddings, and i’d heard she’d gotten married and since i hadn’t been invited, i just figured we weren’t that close.

i added her but didn’t think too much about it, until she posted on my wall:

I search myself I want you to find me…
I forget myself I want you to remind me…

i didn’t get it right away, but then i remembered. see, there was this time in college when i thought i touch myself by the divinyls was the funniest thing ever and i imposed it on my dorm floor like a little audio monsoon. i guess that phase must have been how this girl remembers me more than 10 years later. i feel a bit embarrassed, but in the end it’s who i was so i have to live with it.

i write her a polite message back asking her how she’s been and she won’t tell me, wanting to know first, “what crazy crap have you been up to?”

i was a little surprised that she saw me as someone who would logically be out in the world doing crazy crap. but the problem was, i had been doing a lot of crazy crap recently. this cracked me up. it’s like she just knew. so i was honest and told her about quitting my job, going to europe, the seduction of david, and how we’re secretly living together in amsterdam as i try to coax out a book.

she responded by asking me if i sing “secret lovers” every chance i get.

here’s today’s wtf moment, inspired by kris

a post honoring the spirit of the olympics:

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

I pay handsomely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

or you?

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

******

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what was that?, he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

it’s time to go home, kid.

the war’s over.