Echo

there i was on the sidewalk, having a conversation with a guy i started by yelling across the street. it was one of those flashes, where i’m driving by and we notice each other so quickly in the moment when time doesn’t know it’s merely passing, and we smiled and both said hi, despite the fact that he was on foot and i was in my car. i saw ahead and knew without a doubt that i would park my car, and he and i would have a conversation. sure enough, when i got out of the car, his dog stopped and stared at me, and thus began a conversation standing on opposite sides of the street.

somewhere in the middle, as the sun was setting and he had walked across the street to talk in normal voices, we touched on the topic of fate. we spoke of it intellectually, never addressing the fact that this was one of those meetings in life that felt fated. he told me if i’m ever back in the neighborhood to find him. i knew he wasn’t sure what was happening, that he was open to seeing me again, but that he wasn’t available, thus the veiled suggestion. i told him realistically there was little chance of being able to randomly find him. but then i told him that it’s not impossible. i explained my theory about if i dropped my keys in the ocean and found them again years later on distant shores, i would have my answer. i would believe i have proof of god and universe. he asked me what i would do when i find my keys. “just throw them away?” he asked. he had a way of posing his questions as hypotheses for me to affirm or refute. i was honest. i told him i didn’t know. i only knew their symbolic value.

we stood there talking until the sky was dark, shivering in the cool night air. there was the usual awkwardness in saying goodbye. he told me again that he hoped to run into me again if i’m ever back in the neighborhood. i laughed, and he said, “you’re right, it’s not going to happen is it?” i said that life is strange, and that i believe that people can find each other if they really want to (i think about how this guy, jamie, took my phone number when we met, but i punched in the wrong number. he said he tried various combinations, and managed to reach me. so, anything is possible). “i’m easy to find,” i said. “anyone can find me if they really wanted to.” we parted on, “until next time if it’s meant to be.” it was a pleasant encounter and connection.

I’m from a different world. A world you’ve imagined, but which you didn’t come from.

came home tonight after visiting rie in berkeley. i saw my mom’s light was still on, and she was reading the chinese newspaper.

“hey what was the name of that cruise we went on? celebrity?”

“yeah,” i said.

“mercury, right? they just had an outbreak of 350 cases of stomach flu.”

i looked at the newspaper, and saw the article in a tiny box in the middle of the page, under a domineering photo of the ship. there were a few words in english scattered through the text — celebrity, mercury, cdc, south carolina.

“yeah, that’s the exact ship we were on.”

messaged tom. “looks like they got what you got.”

found an article about it in english. what the fuck has that poor ship been going through. but sounds like the number of cruise-ship outbreaks has gone down in recent years, from 34 in 2006, 21 in 2007, 15 in 2008, and 13 in 2009. if that’s any consolation.

The truth is, there’s a 75% chance I’ll go work for my mom. My greatest fear has always been that she, knowing my powers, would weaponize me. I would like to work for greater powers. But I would love the taste of the hunt without the commitment. That’s why I’ve always liked selling.

Why wonder when you can wander.

what are we doing here? why are we even conscious if most people don’t even use it?

1. The only times you lie to me are the only times I let you get away with lying to me.

2. Don’t confuse me with sex. Overt innuendo is cheap. It makes me want to pounce you, but not respect you. You’re better off with my respect.

*****

1. Be careful of the Scorpio tail.

2. You’re being mirrored. Be still.

i just had a talk with my realtor about why i wrote a letter to her manager saying that while she’s a nice person, she’s negligent, unresponsive and underwhelming in her attention to her professional duties. just recounting all the lapses in her performance was exhausting, and i even told her, “i’m exhausted just going over how hard it was to get on the same page with you and get you to communicate, when in a 10 minute phone call with the other agent, we worked out everything.” she did say that a lot of people normally wouldn’t put that much energy and time into leases versus sales, but she did try to put in work.

that’s like a guy saying to a girl, “most guys would just use you for sex, but i did buy you dinner a few times first.”

i feel like basically, saying that, why sign the contract to rep my property and waste my time, if you viewed it as a low priority to begin with and then try to make an excuse that basically says, “I really didn’t care that much, but I did try to care a little?”

whatever. i’m glad i’m me and not her. at least i’m competent and don’t make excuses when i’m just being lazy.

I’ve put together deals worth just under a million. If I go work for my mom, I will have the opportunity to put together multi-million dollar deals if I believe in myself enough. My greatest fear is that this company has always been her territory, and I’ve always tried to carve mine. The entire family has always had such high expectations of me, that sometimes I feel I have to be perfect in their eyes. Failure is a part of success. You have to fall down lots of times to get better at walking, then running, but while I know this, I also don’t like for them to see the times I fall down. In the past, I just let them know when I’ve won an award, or achieved something. But working for her, they’re going to see all of it, and it’s so much pressure because I don’t want them freaking out when I fall down. I always stand up, but I need them to accept the human process when it comes to me. That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to work for them. The Dark Side, we call the company, since everyone ends up working there. But they always planned for me to be the successor, but weren’t willing to train me. So I became the Prodigal Daughter.

Now, things have changed. My mom had her scare and realized she can’t do it all herself forever. I’m going stir crazy from lack of challenges, particularly since I can’t play basketball anymore so I don’t have that outlet for pushing myself through self-discipline and competition. I don’t have anything that spikes my dopamine levels, which I need. I went in to discuss with Bohr. He doesn’t want to be a product manager anymore, and while he wants the sales commission, he doesn’t want to do sales. He wants us to be a team…I’m the face, brain and mouth, he’s the technical back-up. We would split commission. Working for the Dark Side.

Outcome is 50/50 right now.

A long time ago I dated a guy who took offense when I told him I don’t like to drink orange juice in the morning. I like orange juice but it can sometimes make me feel queasy if I drink it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

He said to me, but you’re lying. I’ve seen you drink orange juice in the morning, and the topic was something that he couldn’t wrap his head around and yet, he couldn’t let go of. I’m serious. He was really perturbed by it, like it was proof of something.

I couldn’t understand why he was so black-and-white and couldn’t understand that I could “not like to drink orange juice in the morning” and yet have been observed drinking orange juice in the morning. Both are true and can co-exist without me being a liar. Sometimes contradictions are incredibly truthful.

For example, I don’t like to drink orange juice in the morning.

But a stronger piece of coding in my brain, is that I shouldn’t waste food.

So if someone pours me orange juice in the morning, I will drink it so I don’t waste it, and also to be polite.

But then, I don’t like to waste food.

But when I’m nervous because I’m feeling shy, it’s hard for me to eat.

So sometimes I will waste food by not eating when I’m feeling shy.

I’m very shy.

But my mind is so hungry for information and understanding, that my curiosity makes me initiate open communication with people, and strive to make them feel comfortable so they will be open.

So even though I’m shy and often feeling anxiety inside when talking to people I don’t know really well, I will still be talkative and actively trying to engage.

I’m an incredibly sociable being that needs to interact with people.

But because interacting with people taxes my energy and focus, the more human interaction I have, the more space and time I need to myself to recharge and reflect.

So even if I can be the life of a party, I’m inherently an introverted, hermit type who’s usually found at home.

The thing I need most and crave most is a secure, home base.

And by having that, it gives me the freedom to feel emotionally safe to travel and explore.

I’m obsessed with being honest and tend to be very straightforward. But because I perceive truth as being so multidimensional, sometimes people perceive me as being abstract or cryptic when I’m at my most honest.

I don’t have an answer for any of this, only that it’s true. Brian always describes me as a human contradiction, two polar opposites that on any given day or time, is somewhere in the spectrum between the two. I just don’t like being called a liar, unless I’m actually not telling the truth.

But there are ways you can answer a question honestly without telling the truth.

The world and its meanings are very big to me. Easy to perceive, hard to understand.

horses.

you put blinders on them and they’ll run for you.

otherwise, all they want to do is find different types of grass to taste.

google trends. great tool.

bloom box.

You never have as much time as you think.

First, the background.

Ezekiel 23:30:

There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Then, the revelation.

Woman on message board:

Can anyone explain Ezekiel 23:20 ? I need to explain it to my child?

Pumpernickel. Etymology. Who knew.

what happens to the man when the butterfly is awake?

i had a conversation with my dad on friday in the car that turned out not to be true. he told me my cousin and his girlfriend asked for two tickets to the game. he said he couldn’t give them to edward because edward’s in china. but the game was on sunday, and on saturday, edward came to the party at our house. so he wasn’t in china. so i asked my dad where the tickets were for my cousin and his girlfriend, but he looked surprised and said, they’re not going to the game. i said he told me they were and that he gave them an extra ticket because edward’s in china. he said he didn’t remember having the conversation, because none of that was true (my cousin wasn’t going to the game, edward wasn’t in china).

i can tell you where we were, where we were going, what was said, what radio station was on when we had that conversation. and yet, why would he have said those things when they weren’t true? or can it be that somewhere, this conversation didn’t happen at all?

next big day, feb 28th.

msg sent.

hard to understand, easy to accept.
easy to accept, hard to understand.

Some people do not live in this world as much as others.