Echo

So having moved the blog, it suddenly showed old comments from before I disabled them. I found a comment from this guy I used to be friends with, but stopped talking to him after I felt like he was using me for some mind game that had less to do with me and a real friendship, and more to do with projections from his conflicted world. Here’s the back story.

So I read the comment, and it sounded like familiar bullshit that he was spitting to me at the time. He was always trying to hang his issues on me, and project them as mine. The comment sounded like he was just using me to get himself to drink his own koolaid. I usually try not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sometimes, people say things about you that you don’t want to hear, and your automatic response is to dismiss it. But there could be some truth that might help you become a better version of yourself, if you can just objectively separate things that may be useful to you, from things that you genuinely feel don’t apply. I always try to hear what people are saying at the very least, before deciding. You can’t go blindly either way, but ideally, you have to trust yourself to know yourself best, discern what is helpful input and what is not, and to decide the direction of your own life. It’s also helpful to get someone you trust’s feedback for an outside perspective. Using triangles are easiest ways to derive perspective. So I sent it to Rie. I’m really posting this because Rie’s response is awesome.

From B:

Moments can be perfect. Like a poem or song. Everything is there, just as it should be. But life is everything in between. Life is never pure. Life is confusion. Life is the unpredictable. Life makes you vulnerable.  You revel in your angst. You like the moment… because you feel alive without really living. You play a familiar role… even the “real” you you choose to share is a familiar song with a small jazz improv bit that is quickly dropped when it stops feeling familiar.
But you are not being fair to yourself. You’re more than you think you are. You are more than someone who channels. Everything you use to describe your “magic” deals with stealing and borrowing from others…unknowingly proclaiming that you are nothing more than a radio capturing a signal. But you are so much more than that.  It’ll take someone with a stable sense of love and trust to allow you to discover this. Unaware, I hated myself and denied anything more than charming others with the ‘Me’ I liked. But in doing so, I hated those around me for not knowing the real me. But I met someone with that love and trust. It was tough. I didn’t believe her. I thought she was crazy. But slowly she showed me that what I thought was empty was filled. She showed me what it was filled with without condescend. I still doubt that what is there is there. I still battle with self hatred. But I can trust and love.

From Rie:

He’s trying to say you aren’t being real to him. He’s just whining, really. So his comment, to me, isn’t an analysis, it’s more like he’s complaining to you about not showing HIM the real you.

It’s interesting though; the act of analyzing someone is flattering to the one who’s being analyzed (you, in this situation), and he knows that and plays with it. It’s a double-edged sword because it’s in one’s nature to want to hear more about themselves through another person’s eyes (that’s why certain other readers are on your blog all the time). Yet, some idiots like Bobby take that opportunity to slide in some jabs, based on their own insecurities and doubts.

My take on it is, first of all, there is no “real” you. Or “real” me, for that matter. We all play a role in society, in our relationships, etc. We have our beliefs, principles, etc, and that makes up our idea of who the “real me” is, but that’s something that’s felt by others, not analyzed and confirmed. Bobby apparently didn’t feel like he knew the real you. He felt that pretending to analyze you while flattering you at the same time would make him trust you, that that would be his way “in” to you. Maybe you never showed him the real you. Or maybe you did, but he didn’t trust it.

Whatever it is, it’s irrelevant. You are whatever you want to be to other people. You’re a REAL person to me, for example, because you want to be, and I feel instinctively that you are. There’s no analyzing.

the conscious gemini is perpetually looking for the one she was separated from by birth. the universe is such a big place. and even if she remembers the Before, will he?

So wrong…

what do you do when what you want and what you need are at cross-purposes?

field notes – triple door 3/13/10 (arrival 10:54pm/departure 12:14am)

If they’re watching you, even from across the room, they’ll mirror you. That’s how you can tell someone is watching you, even if their eyes aren’t on you. Or, when you make eye contact, they’ll perform a gesture to see if you mirror them. It’s to see if you are subconsciously in agreement with them. This is how they test for connection.

If you’re agreeable by nature, you’ll tend to mirror people without being necessarily conscious of it. If you tend to find yourself stuck in unwanted situations and you don’t know why or how, either your subconscious is working against you, or it’s leading you without you being fully aware. It takes consciousness + discipline to suppress the urge to mirror. You have to let yourself relax, stand your ground, solidify your core.

They say that when you write, you have to think of the person you’re writing to. One famous writer wrote from the point of view as though he were talking to his dead sister. You never fully understood who you were writing to and you’re always trying to get other people to tell you. Maybe you’re writing full circle to yourself. Like a game of telephone with yourself that travels through people’s consciousness and back to you. You always said if you lost something and it went around the world through time and space and it found you again, you would believe in god and universe. Maybe that’s your God. A full circle. That everything begins and ends, but there’s really no difference between the two. That everything is everything. Maybe you hope to find that sign of life, where one day, someone calls out your name, in a voice more familiar than time.

sometimes, it’s the moment that grips me in the throat, and i forget to breathe

When you’re in tune with a room, it’s like having a radar. And you can feel who notices you, who wants to be let in. It’s like because they notice you in a crowded room, you exist for them, and vice versa, they now exist for you. You walk into a room, and ignore everyone. And soon, there’s a tingling. A feeling of being watched. And you can feel their proximity. Sometimes, it’s just a knowing. Sometimes, it’s a heat, an echo, or a flat, dull void. And you turn your head in that direction and through the dark, are two piercing eyes. You only let in the ones with smiles you recognize.

I love leaving a place for a month and coming back. See how it’s moved. See what else I notice about it, having reset my perspective. The biggest change this time back is I can sit in a room and not care who the fuck notices me. I can be in my own world, or I can be in the collective one, but either way, if I don’t make eye contact with you, you don’t approach me. For the most part, the room stayed at bay.

Most people won’t make contact unless you’ve had eye contact with them. Learn to look at people, take in information, without making a connection.

I wondered, can I pull signals not in the room. I focused my mind on California and concentrated on, “Find me now.” Looked down at my phone. Red light blinking for a msg received. Two fish on one line coming in at 11:05pm from Northern CA, one from Curtis, one from Rie. I raised an eyebrow. Noted it in my notebook. If today is this magnetic, tomorrow should be even more interesting, given it’s an 11 day. The knowledge is dropping like snowflakes tonight.

I’ve always taught myself. I let myself lead myself. So who is it that’s handing the knowledge to me? Is it something so grand as a greater force? Or is it just me in the Future, passing it back? Have I traveled so fast that I am only a shadow, an echo, of myself? I don’t think that person has that much power or knows particularly more. That person just has wisdom from perspective, as one might if they were a bit further ahead in the story. And I have to make the right decisions, so that the things I know to be true in the future can exist as I walk towards them in the present.

Every relationship has an optimal place and condition that it inherently defines. We try so hard to force relationships into roles, particularly because society demands that of us for order, but in order for them to really activate and fulfill their highest potential, you have to look really honestly and create a space where you can accept relationships for what they are. Even if that means compromises or being unconventional.

Yesterday I got hit with hot oil on my ring finger and it left a welt. I noticed it this morning, and it’s a red diagonal slash exactly where I would wear a ring. I wonder if it’ll leave a scar. It looks like a brand. Like some mythical god branded me his. I would be very disturbed if I found myself mysteriously pregnant with a half god/half human prodigy.

But then again, the world needs a new hero.

If you put too much energy into what other people think, you’ll never even get to know what you think.

Writers are willing to see Truth. Life from the only point of view they could ever really know…theirs.

We are our own personal truths.

No one is simple. There are just degrees of blindness.

The arks are where the knowledge will be stored. Like grabbing what will be needed for a new mankind. For whatever reason, I’m in charge of information, knowledge. Understanding of humanity. A belief in innocence.

If you detach and live in your own world, but your world is powerful enough to pull people into it, does it matter if it wasn’t the original world?

Fuck, I got caught. Unwanted eye contact. Now a conversation is inevitable. At least this is like paintball. Get caught and you’re just dead in the game. Out there, get caught and you’re dead.

I just pretended I was deaf and/or foreign. First time I had the guts to commit to that. The thing about that play is, if you can’t pull it off, you’re SUCH an asshole.

Sometimes I wonder if this blog is about the things I care about, or the things I let go. Probably a little bit of both.

“Are you writing a book or something?” He was Filipino with a blue baseball cap. I smiled.

“Just a letter to a friend,” I said.

They say, “You can’t use people for sex.” And she thought, “But why else would you get close to them?”

This fucking guy ambushed a group of tall, pretty girls dressed like they just left the symphony. “I’m not like a one night stand kind of guy. I’m just a 4, you know, but this girl was an 11. So what can I say? It was like hitting the lotto! I couldn’t say no. But I didn’t want to be that guy who’s an asshole and uses girls, so I tried to call her the next day, but she’d given me that you’ve-been-dumped hotline, so I guess she wasn’t interested.”

try: cucumber mint lemonade / lavender mint water

Curtis writes: Some people just don’t know when to laugh.

I write: I think it’s a dance. Meanings and intentions with how they work between people. Sometimes people are synched at a low level but it stays consistent. Some people go through cycles of high synch and complete incommunicability. And some people just completely come from different planets.

Curtis writes: Sometimes people from the bigger planet like to bump into little planets just for fun.

This is my biggest laugh tonight. The idea that these people aren’t just bumping the people from little planets, but the planets themselves.

You have to take ownership of what you want. How else do you stand a chance of getting it?

When you refuse eye contact with people, sometimes they angle their bodies towards you, even framing the parts of their body they want you to notice.

Some people just talk in circles that go nowhere. They talk just to distract you from the fact they have nothing to talk about.

The problem is you want a Snake Eyes, Alfred and a champion. You can have it all, just not at the same time.

Do you want to be with an 11 or a 3? Do you want to reach for more or fall back? Chase? Or be supported?

cuz i could lead the nation with a microphone.

and i wonder if i ever cross your mind
for me it happens all the time
it’s a quarter after 1 and i’m all alone and i need you now…

except it’s actually 2. happy daylight savings.

with an assist from dayquil, i toughed it out today and showed up for work.

Synopsis: While driving on a rural road in the dead of the night in Mexico, a couple in a strained marriage believes it sees human body parts lying in the middle of the road.
Genre: Psychological Horror

Dir: Julia P. Shih
DP: Bill Otto
Cast: PJ Marino, Susan Denaker, Daniel Lujan
Original Score: Jonathan Kranz

Format: Super 16mm transferred to HD CAM
Festivals: Boston International Independent Film Festival (2007), Beverly Hills Hi-Def Film Festival (2006)

from 4/9/08, 1:36am. wtf. my guess is i was fed up with someone, but still in a whimsical mood.

a measurement of dick

you’re not the first to cross oceans for me.

i’ve had entire indigenous tribes come knocking on my door.

they bring their tools because they have to carve statues of me or the gods will eat their babies.

scientists are hard at work creating a male womb so men can catch my seed

spielberg’s directing a movie about my life story. angelina jolie was supposed to play me, but i asked for someone less homely and less ethnic.

my breasts were just named Time’s People of the Year.

sometimes i tell people i’m a lesbian who lost her vagina in the war just so they can go on living after the rejection.

it’s okay to cry over me.

most men do

i’m one of a kind and the loss can be quite devastating.

Character is who you are when no one is watching.

Sexual politics as observed from an episode of Boston Public. Alan’s a lawyer who claims he’s in heat, and he’s the kind who never has to prowl. Women tend to find him. He harasses a new associate by constantly leering at her and she succumbs.

Marlene: This will stop.

Alan Shore: What will stop?

Marlene: You and your little games. They’re a distraction and they will stop.

Alan Shore: What do you suggest instead?

Marlene: We’re going to make love. You’re going to give me everything you’ve got. We’re going to get this out of our system. It will be kept between the two of us, and then we will move on.

Alan Shore: Sounds very organized.

Marlene: Cut the nonsense. Are you in or not?

Alan Shore: I’m very much in. However, I have some thoughts. First, I’m a bit old-fashioned when it comes to certain women. I prefer to do the stalking.

Marlene: You’ve got 24 hours.

Alan Shore: I certainly won’t be timed.

Marlene: I think you’re vile.

Alan Shore: That’s a very good sign. For some, it takes quite a while to reach that point. But you seem very in touch with the worst that the world has to offer. You’ve always been a very bad girl. And now you’re working to awful and you think I’m just the lucky lad to get you there. You just might be right. As long as it’s…messy…and…hurts just a bit.

He runs his hand slowly up the back of her thigh, just under her skirt.

Alan Shore: …just as soon as I’m back from Los Angeles.

Picks up his briefcase and exits.

what a bastard i am for not remembering my actress’s names.

in the weeks following surgery, i was feeling a little slow and my short term memory was a little wonky. i was a little worried about my cognitive ability, so i found this website, Lumosity, that has cognitive training games and lets you keep track of your progress. there was this one match game, basically Memory, where you have cards in a grid, and you flip two cards, trying to find the two that match. Except rather than two identical matching cards, you have to match a name with the face. I was pretty good overall, but I saw a lot of discrepancies in how I recognize people by name. I recognize young guys who are smiling the easiest, followed by men who aren’t smiling, and far in the distance…women. If two women had blond hair or similar “styles,” i couldn’t tell which name belong to whom for the life of me.

it shows my priorities. I love me some men with nice smiles, don’t give a shit about women.

i’m not proud.

Director: Julia P. Shih
DP: Brett Juskalian
Cast: Kurt Koehler

Director: Julia P. Shih
DP: Brett Juskalian
Cast: Max Herholz

Seeing as I believe everything happens for a reason, I asked the mysterious lyrical poet, “What inspires you?”

His answer:

What inspires me. A burning question that haunts me quite often i’m afraid. The funny thing is, it’s almost like different periods or even different pieces I’m working on in succession require DRASTICALLY different inspirational conduits. The reality is people are not static, artists especially. I can deliver placid faces, surface level conversation and emotions for the people around us and meanwhile there are raging rivers of change below the surface…(what is that called, scanda?) At least that’s how I feel. And in this case it’s a double edged sword, because I’m always evolving internally (positive) but my changes happen faster than my productivity in my creative efforts so that by the time I can get something done, I’m not feelin it as much anymore!! Lol. That is a bit of an extreme though to be honest, but very relevant.

What inspires me is usually movement and progress with OTHER things outside of my creative life. As much as I hate to admit it. I’d like to think that if I had all the money I needed without having a job, and if I could get by in life without the paper degree saying I’m teachable and reliable, and I could just float around as I please and write, that I would be as happy as could be. Truth is, I had a taste of that and it had the exact opposite effect. Movement and progress in other life areas, even if its a sport or a social activity. Progression + evolution x outside of creative passion = the drive and sometimes the inspiration.

I have the usual ones too though, nature (ambiguous I know, water is my favorite though. Lakes oceans rivers..large puddles. rain), and people watching places, like coffee shops downtown with really large windows. Lol i’m sure I could go on and bore you but there is so much to say on such a small question!

Oh and here, dine on this video when you get a chance, some of Ms. Gilbert’s ideas on SEPARATION OF SELF FROM THE RECEPTION OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS is REALLY REALLY important to a person like me, I’m soooo critical. And I have what I would like to believe is a pretty good spiritual belief system, and I try and put it to use in this realm of my life as best I can.
In this video though it just reaffirmed some of my beliefs or methods in separating ME from IT. It’s interesting to hear someone else describe their personal methods though.

Enjoy.

heads up. today’s another 3x 9 day. make the most of it. look for signs of life. magic.

back in seattle. got hugged by a crack ho trying to get me to give her 5 dollars for “a sanitary napkin.” i gave her three dollars, which was what i had in my pocket, kind of thrust them at her while twisting out of her grasp, mostly because i was afraid she would try to hug me again.

went to berkeley tonight to meet up with rie and head over to aubrey and candice’s to visit their baby. we went to pick up some food at the berkeley bowl, this whole-foods like market where the produce is supposed to be all local. i was driving the shopping cart with seigo in it, and we were talking about where i should move as she picked out some organic mango slices from a plastic bin. i said, “i just feel like san jose will be really boring.”

a big, black brutha who looked like a rich man’s common, overheard and walked by saying, “yeah it’ll be.” i laughed and rie stared. “you don’t want to live in san jose,” he said, smiled and walked away.

i went on saying that fremont would be worse when rie turned around almost in a panic and said, “that guy was really hot! why didn’t you do anything?”

“what was to be done?” i asked. it’s not like he stopped and asked me for my number and i said no. “besides,” i said, nodding towards seigo, “he probably talked to me cuz he thought seigo’s my kid, so i’m safe.” we kept bumping into him in the aisles and almost because rie had made a big deal of it, i was embarrassed every time.

we headed over to aubrey and candice’s with takeout and spent the night chatting with them. rie and eric only live about 10 minutes away from them, so i hope they can hang out, even if i’m not there. rie’s my best friend from college and aubrey’s my best friend from high school. they both recently had kids. they should hang.

ethan fell asleep in my arms and i didn’t want to move and wake him, so i told aubrey to go take a nap while his son was down. i can’t imagine it, how new parents can function on so little sleep.

we drank wine with candice. girl talk. men, life, etc. biggest disappointment? a bad kisser.

“can a guy be a bad kisser but good in bed?”

“NO!” we said. if a guy’s a bad kisser, who sticks around long enough to find out if he’s good in bed?

candice can not believe my celibacy thing. why do you think i went so nuts with basketball last year?

“it’s not from lack of trying,” i said.

“it IS from lack of trying,” rie said.

i’ve always been very good about not rebounding between relationships. if i meet a guy and really like him, i want to know that i’m being fair to him and the relationship, to feel confident that i know to the best of my understanding up to this point in life what i want, what i need. to like a guy for who he is rather than projections and mitigating circumstances driven by the past. i won’t use you. please don’t use me. that’s what i try to bring to relationships. that, and absolute awesomeness.

but this requires long stretches of self-discipline, soul-searching, and lots and lots and lots of exercise. i’m just looking for someone i can really feel connected with.

got a message from michael. my mom has a free southwest ticket which she said i could use to fly back to seattle. these tickets can be booked anytime so i’ve been procrastinating with it, but michael’s our family travel agent so he offered to book it for me. he booked it, but he didn’t change the name so apparently, my mom was booked for a flight to seattle. had to head home to fix it.

it amazes me to think that the next time i come back to the bay area, probably in 6-8 weeks, ethan will be so much bigger. he’s 6 weeks now, but infants grow so fast. the development is exponential.

before leaving, i took this picture of seigo:

precious little munchkin.

weird. got a friend request from that rapper/lyrical poet from the theoretics, this funk/hip hop group i really like in seattle. i’d recently been hyping them on facebook. i had tried to fly back in time for their show last month (and had invited some of my basketball teammates), but i had to go to la for my shoulder check-up instead. but i’d pulled a couple of clips off youtube and put them on my facebook. he sent a message, “you came to my performance at the triple door, correct?”

i was surprised because i remember he had noticed me and we had smiled at each other, but i didn’t go up and talk to him even though it was a small club because i’m not like that. call it shy, call it believing that conversation should happen naturally, call it not wanting to be another groupie, i don’t know. but i did buy his group’s cd, which i’d been enjoying in my cd player in seattle, and signed up for the mailing list.

i thought about it, and figured he probably sent a mass friend request to everyone who had signed up for the mailing list who had been at the show, or somehow tracked back the youtube clips and saw what i wrote about them on facebook. it was just another random add. but i sent him a message saying that their show at the triple door was the best show i’d seen in seattle and i was looking forward to the march show.

he wrote back asking how long i would be in seattle, and what i was doing in ca.

??

does he actually remember me? so random.