Echo

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.