Echo

I am solid as rock. Pliable as bamboo.
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Michael taught me a Chinese saying:

Good intentions, yet the dog still bites you.

You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger.

-Buddha

Michael shares my ability to listen to the same songs over and over again. Except he’s merciless. I hear his songs in my dreams.

One day all measurements of worth could be thrown up in the air and you are going to have to quickly decide what has value to you.

Be good, children.
Be big and good.

My favorite Chinese word is bearcat.

People are a lot more alike as children. And then as their personal worlds assume them, they start coming from different places. 2012 is possibility of end of world “as we know it.” I’ve been noticing my metaphors. And the synchs around me.

I’m thankful that I chose a challenging beginning that taught me character and perspective before I realized my power.

Hey Jake!
I let the day lead me and I think I figured it out. It’s about big picture and little picture and not being able to save everybody. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve been able to separate being helpful as a living from my focused personal path where I aimed my hopes and dreams. I’m always searching for truth in really big philosophical ways and many of the things I find tell me that it’s really important to be a kind person to the best of my ability in every moment and every interaction. Sometimes people want to be attached and I’m only willing to if it positively serves both people mutually. Close relationships need to allow both people to be the people they are as they become the people they are trying to be. But my family background and role give me a real vulnerability to obligation. Is it the cuckoo or the dodo who would sneak their eggs into the eagle’s nest and the eagle would end up feeding their young as their own, sometimes inadvertently starving their own? I often feel that relationships have a right time, place and distance that can be perceived as an organic thing, like the energy between two dancers that moves them as much as they create it. Most of the time we’re trying to fit ourselves into It, or our idea of what it should be, instead of letting every relationship be what it naturally seems and evolve the way it naturally evolves, and allow them to fill the spaces or roles you need. It seems like the clearest way for each person to want what they get when they get what they want,because there will be a natural fit, and all you have to do is recognize it and try to be true to it.

I do like being helpful but I’m never going to let anyone pull me off my path because I often feel what I’m working on, what my life’s purpose has single-mindedly directed me towards, is bigger than me and I owe it to a lot of people to believe in myself enough to make it happen. And so I can’t let people attach to me in any way that would pull me off my path. The people in my life who care about me and whom I care about allow me that freedom and trust to define the relationships openly. And I do my best to honor them. But I also know that any relationship be it friendship or romantic that is being forced out of what it naturally should be will not be good for anyone involved.

Sometimes I wish people would trust me more, even though I’m the first to admit I don’t have all the answers or know what It is yet. But my instincts are good when I trust them. Sometimes the optimal connection where you really get the best out of someone isn’t ideally where you would like it, but you have to appreciate it for what it is. If there is a role you want filled, let it come to you and give it space to land, and it will be exactly what you want because it’s exactly where it fits. This is how I’ve been living my life the past few years and it has been amazingly positive, relieving and fulfilling. But then someone makes me feel guilty because they want to be in a role that I would be more than happy to give them if they were right, but there has to be a natural fit. And when they start forcing it and it becomes unnatural, I know it’s not right. Maybe it’s not the person but the timing, and if that’s the case, no one has to worry–if you’re meant to be you’ll be there when it’s the right time, if it’s not, you’ll each find someone who is, so it’s win-win. There’s no point in burning a bridge. Trust the system. But when people run a positive connection into the ground, it makes me feel like they never believed in the possibility in the first place. I am just as guilty of this. But it doesn’t stop me from being sad. Why don’t we believe in ourselves as so much bigger?

Thanks, Jake, for being my partner in this existential understanding. I think the reason I was fixated on this question of what happened was because I’m trying to understand something on a bigger level, and I felt there was some kind of important reflection in there. Even metaphorically. Travel is great for taking you out of perspective because you mess up linear perception–out of time, out of space. And suddenly you’re putting things together differently. Or at least you have the opportunity to. I was thinking about you and how far we’ve come, from when you were Chill and I was clueless, to our lives in the present moment. Where we are, what we’ve experienced, all the big and small moments of life, the people, the story lines, the millions of different evolving threads that led us away from ourselves and back. How much motion is happening in the world around us on infinite levels from the molecular to the majestic, how much we are constantly moving and changing on infinite levels inside us, and yet, throughout all that sheer space and ordered chaos, there are those connections that remain familiar and safe. That’s such an amazing thing.

I hope you have an amazing life.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

-Henry David Thoreau

Important Lesson Reminder.

DO NOT LOSE FOCUS.

We spent 5 days in Taipei, overcoming jetlag and spending time with my grandmother. Weather is hot and humid, food was utter gluttony and cheap, and I think even my hair got fat. My uncle offered me a job at his company in Taipei as a sales assistant, just for about 6 months, saying that I could use the opportunity to take Chinese classes at night and strengthen my professional Chinese through baptism by fire. It’s actually an interesting offer. I wouldn’t make as much as I would in the US, but I also wouldn’t pay taxes here. I don’t know if I’m ready to jump back into an office environment by moving to a new country though. Like I said, moving to a new city and starting a new job are challenges enough in their own right, but to move to a new country where I’m basically illiterate and starting a new job where 90% of it will require me to speak a language in which I have a 4th-grade level vocabulary will be brutal. It’s interesting to me because I’m adaptable and a survivor so I’ll survive and make it work, and in the end, it will make me a better person with more tools for it, but maybe it’s something I should consider in the near future. Moving back to the bay area and working for the dark side will be challenges enough. If there’s any silver lining, it’s that I won’t have to deal with any relationship distractions when I get there.

We didn’t do much in Taipei outside of eat. There’s this one handpulled noodle place up the street from my grandmother’s that’s amazing, and the shopkeeper always remembers my brother and I. Probably because by Taiwanese standards, we’re huge (to give you an example, I’ve never found a bra for sale in Taiwan bigger than a B cup, and a woman’s shoe size bigger than an 8). She saw us and said we both lost a lot of weight. Michael is definitely looking a lot leaner, especially since we’ve cut his medications. I’m actually 7 lbs heavier since the last time she saw me, but I have a theory that when you shed “issues,” emotional baggage that you’ve been clinging to, people tend to think you lost weight. In the last few years, particularly from 2007 and on, I’ve been making a conscious issues to deal with issues from childhood and on, and let go. People are always saying I lost weight, even though I haven’t. I think it’s an aura thing. Or maybe we just carry it in our bodies, even when they don’t have physical weight.

We moved on to Shanghai where we met up with my dad who was already there on business. We stayed at a 2 bedroom executive suite in the Marriott which was beautiful. If I found a condo like it, even if it was a ground-level one in Fremont, I would be so happy. It was a beautiful, modern place with dark wood-paneling and well laid-out. We were there to visit the World Expo, this giant city-sized sprawl of pavilions representing about 191 countries and 50 organizations. The place was a zoo and you need weeks to be able to see everything. The first day, we visited Turkmenistan (yes, none of us had even heard of it), Morocco, Spain, Italy and Germany. Spain was the most exciting, featuring a live flamenco dancer and a beautiful slideshow. Italy was the most impressive (they have so much culture and civilization), and Germany, which requires up to a 3 hour wait most days, was exactly what you expect–it looked like it an oversized stealth bomber and featured all of their cutting edge technology including a 1.3 ton ball that was supposedly moved by sound, but a bit underwhelming given the wait time. The UK Pavilion was modeled after a dandelion and was the most stunningly creative. They featured “a dazzling cube formed by more than 60,000 slim and transparent acrylic rods containing seeds of different plants that were collected in a bio-diversity project.” Blew my mind. I’ll post pictures later.  Though sidebar–the giant dandelion made me think about how in Ghostwritten, David Mitchell had talked about how Italians gave their city sexes and all agreed that the sex of each city was correct, and how if England were a person, it would be a closeted gay man.

We were exhausted the next day and limping around from all the time spent on our feet, so our entire family went for foot massages, then headed out to the Expo after the sun set. We checked out the Sultanate of Oman (cool), Pakistan (skip), Tibet (recommend the short film for breathtaking landscapes), Nepal (a great view), France (all captions written in either Chinese or French), Netherlands (check out the floating rock and take your picture with some sheep!) and the Africa Joint Pavilion (worth taking a look, especially since chancese are, you’ll never visit those countries in this lifetime).  To anyone planning to visit the World Expo, I highly recommend seeing the less popular pavilions first, and then waiting until after 7pm to visit the popular ones, because the tour groups leave after 7 so the lines move faster. We wanted to see Japan which is the most popular, but even minutes before the cut off, the line was a 3 hour wait and the people in it looked exhausted.

We drove from Shanghai to Suzhou today, the city where my dad’s family’s from. Suzhou is an industrial city famous for producing writers and poets. My mom’s family is from Winzhou, which is known for producing very shrewd business people. My mom is always saying that people need to understand that I’m two people with two distinct personalities–one is very artistic and creative, the other is very business and success-oriented. Whenever one side gets its way, the other is always restless, but there’s a balance somewhere where both sides can be happy. I think it’s interesting that my personality splits along the exact lines of my parents’ lineage–the Suzhou (poetic) and the Winzhou (business).

My parents bought a condo here a few years ago while Suzhou was up and coming and very inexpensive, since my dad’s business is here, and my brother and I got to see it for the first time today. It’s a beautiful place adjacent to a shopping mall and next door to another mall with a grocery store. There’s even a Coffee Bean downstairs (in the Los Angeles coffee wars, you’re either a Starbucks person or a Coffee Bean person. With my laidback and friendly demeanor, I am a clear Coffee Bean person). I also think that it’s good because should the world erupt in political upheaval, we have a place in China to escape to. Several members of our family have also bought places in Suzhou, using them as rental properties for now.

In closing, just some random notes:

-Facebook is banned in China. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t sign on until I was troubleshooting through Google and discovered that fact. My mom says it’s because China doesn’t like people networking and talking.

-I’d discovered in Amsterdam that Lay’s Potato Chips distributes different flavors in different countries. I was looking at them at the supermarket today, and found a Blueberry flavor. Blueberry -flavored potato chips! Of course I bought a bag! And they are what you’d expect. Blueberry-flavored, like cereal. With salty accompanying taste, like a midget riding in the sidecar of a motorcycle. A confused kind of disgusting.

-A 600ml bottle of TsingTao beer. That’s a giant bottle. I brought it up to my parents and asked them how much they thought it cost in RMB (exchange rate is 6.8 RMB = $1 US). 8 dollars was my mom’s guess. 10 dollars was my dad’s. Nope, I said. 2.80 RMB. That’s 41 cents US. Do you realize how big of drunks Americans would be in China?, I asked. Well, bigger drunks than they already are.

-Mainland Chinese people have not really learned the art of the queue yet. They’ll shove ahead of you if you so much as give them some daylight, even if they only move up 1 person in line. And they push up against you. It’s kind of irritating, but my mom’s point was that this is all new to them. It’s a social grace that they’ve never learned, but give them 20 years. I’ve always worried about how China’s power potential is so far ahead of their civilization. I hope so. It is a country of so many people that they run into each other all the time without noticing. It can get pretty irritating after a while. Yesterday, I was standing still, taking a picture and this old lady full on slammed into me, then turned around and yelled at me to watch where I was going. When I told my family about it, my uncle asked if I talked back to her. I told him I told her to watch where SHE was going. I kind of felt bad because she was elder, and I’d lost my patience and gotten rude. But he said, good. People can be really rude here. But my mom has a point. These are still our people. They just grew up in a different culture.

I’m getting to the point where I feel I should no longer have to explain myself. People who can see and feel me will naturally be aligned while those who need or demand me to explain and defend myself are simply not my companions from this point forward. This next stage is not about justification. I am already clear on what I am and what I can do. I already understand the boundaries of human potential are self determined and it is fear and an inability to let go of illusion that prevents us from realizing ourselves. I know my purpose and I know what I stand for. I do not need to explain myself to those who still live lives of resistance and fear. They are simply not ready yet. This next stage is about action. It is those who gave up on their dreams who will work the hardest to make you give up yours. Be compassionate to those who let fear and loss be their guides but never let it determine your life. It’s time for us to realize the unlimited extent of our being. It is time to manifest what’s next.

“Where there is great love there are always miracles. Miracles rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming to us from afar off, but on our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

-Willa Cather

“Have the courage to analyze great emotions to create characters who shall be lofty and true. The whole art of the…novel lies there.”

SMCWBR11-G1. Who are you? And were you the one who sighed in the doorway this morning, when I woke up to find no one there?

This girl on this Taiwanese tv show just pulled a guy out of a house and said completely incredulously, “Your house is a mess! Are you trying to torture people?” And he stood there like a stoic little boy trying to hold back tears for being busted. It was actually hilarious. It made me wonder if she just walked into a really messy pig house or some super twisted thing happened at the family dinner table.

The thing about Scorpio anything is that they’re either really primitive or really brilliant. They show flashes of both with determined extreme. I wouldn’t count on them to unravel the mysteries of the world. They would just withhold it to use it to their advantage. They tend to be good in bed but you will pay a price. But they’re good at handling transactions with such dexterity you often don’t realize what you paid until it’s too late if at all.

Whit, I was in your neck of hometown woods and tried to order a blueberry Italian soda. Life has not been what it seemed lately and I needed to know if it was tasting like milk again. But they didn’t have it. I am enjoying the depths. I get the eagle and the dragon. So fucked up what they did to Pluto. It’s been like becoming a chameleon. If I change myself to dark and stand in a corner for a while, I see shadows come to life.

Alright, let myself have 2 days to verbally burn off my excess fire and now it’s time to shut up and move on. Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan have been warning about volcanos for years now. That has to be the most quoted song on here.

Business Class on Eva Air is no joke. Except the chair turns into this upward sloping stretcher in sleep mode which is a little like standing up.

SFO is beautiful to fly in and out of. We flew out at dusk, my favorite time of day. It’s my sunrise. Take off was beautiful. Aviation. What a miracle. As we were pulling onto the runway, I caught a jumbo taking off in the opposite direction. With its lights against the mountains in twilight, it looked like a spacecraft. It made me proud of humankind. By the way, if you had a film camera, you would be the only one able to capture San Francisco and the breathtaking Pacific Coast at magic hour during take off. Some things still have a worthwhile function.

I wonder if there is a correlation between children who have ridden in planes a lot and creativity. When you’ve seen the world you know turned into a living organism made of insects, you have perspective of things. From the ground looking up at the cities and their towering structures, we see how big we can be. From a height looking down, we see how incredibly small we are. We are so many things. Simultaneously. We are so many things in possibility. Your own personal world can be giant, but what of the giant world of civilizations and nations, which are just as real? Perhaps if there are so many ways of looking at very real things, we can decide what is real.

That’s the thing about creatives. We believe we can create. Not all creatives are artists. We are merely predisposed to artistic talents and interests. Wherever our interests lay, wherever our hearts and souls attach, we try to bring into the world what we imagine could be here within the realm of possibility. Heaven and hell, changes of weather, material gain. Power. Love. Healing. Or even the smallest blossoming of wonder when one is most needed. Creatives turn belief and vision into reality. They move things between two complementary but very distant worlds. But it all starts with an idea that what’s real is malleable. That maybe what’s real lies within how you look at things. When I’ve seen ants organize scavenging expeditions and risk death to reclaim their dead. When I’ve seen cities look like distant constellations from high above in the night sky. When I’ve looked someone in the eye and said, I think I know you because you were in my dream last night. And none of that changes what’s real. What’s real is everything you make it.

What’s interesting was last year I looked forward and saw I wouldn’t be in a partnership until August. I thought this thing came out of the blue and changed things, but disqualified itself just as quickly. So it looks like it’s still August. Maybe this was a test to make sure I deserve August. I hope so. “It’s either you or the guy behind you.” i wrote that last year. Please be a good one, August. I’ve been waiting a long time.

I really don’t want to talk about it anymore. I think the thing that really inflames me is how everything now falls under the shadow of doubt. Everything he ever said, everything he ever did, I can’t believe anything when he’s been looking me in the eye this whole time, wanting and allowing me to believe he was this open, honest guy, when he’s been hiding this the whole time. Makes me wonder what else he hides. What was actually real. Who the fuck is he. Even the smallest thing sets my insides off again, like how he told me he had shaved his beard so maybe a part of him knew I was coming in. Now I think he shaved it for Sandi. Makes me wonder what else he planned, or would have “let happen.” That explains why he looked so stricken when I surprised him. Maybe it was guilt. Rie told me she thinks they’re still fucking. She said maybe he wanted to take a break because he found something shinier, but it was only a matter of time if he was supposedly so into me but still seeing her nearly everyday. He invited her into his bedroom on a Friday night to “watch a movie.” While I was supposed to be out of town. That hardly sounds like a man setting boundaries. It sounds like a man trying to get his cake and eat it, too. And his MSG that just said she left later than expected when he was supposed to call. His excuse was that he didn’t want me to think she spent the night. Instead it begged the question, what do you mean she left later than expected? And why would I think you would let her spend the night unless the danger had been there? Rie told me, it only takes an hour to fuck. And the truth is, a guy who can hide things from you, what about him or what he says can you really believe? You don’t really know him. All you had was faith and now you know you don’t even have that. Everything is questionable.

That’s been the worst part. Not knowing what else was lies, manipulation. Even if everything was true except his hiding this one thing, I don’t have a bridge of trust to fall back on. It’s gone. All I have is the fact that he hid this from me, he had a simultaneous relationship going on while looking me in the eye and presenting himself as honorable and dependable. A week ago, I would have said the one thing I didn’t doubt was his integrity. His sincerity. But now those are exactly what this situation jeopardized. You break someone’s trust, how can they ever believe you again? You’ve been deceptive once. It is now within the realm of possibility that you’re capable if it at will.

I was thinking about how when you read people’s dating ads, they always say they don’t want drama. I think people may not always want drama, but they invite it. Maturity has to do with making a conscious decision not to allow it in, whether looking for it or letting it in. People can say they don’t want drama, but are they in a place in their life where they can live without it? I don’t want drama. I’ve had enough. I don’t mind it outside, but when I come home, I want to create a safe, caring environment for my loved one, and for him to do the same. I want home to be safe. Dependable. Something I can always count on. It seems like common sense but not everyone wants the same thing. I have to find someone who wants the same thing, and has the character and maturity to help me create it.