b o i l e d . r a s p b e r r i e s

Goodbye.

2011-04-03T21:29:00.001-04:00

This place is too small. I no longer belong here.

~~I am, as Kafka said, "A cage in search of a bird."~~

~~http://fiftyfourtwo.blogspot.com/~~

http://galacticminutiae.blogspot.com/

"Do not hold back."

I could find them. The few faceless children

2011-03-23T04:47:00.006-04:00

whose names I've sewn into my mind.

My childhood is so shaken, shattered and reassembled in my memory that I don't know the number of elementary schools I attended. I want to say nine. But there may be more. I can recite the names of four.

With a few clicks on Facebook, I could paste adult faces to those faint names — some of which I've forgotten how to spell.

I could ask them questions:

What do you remember (if anything) about the small Asian girl who interrupted your life for a handful of months and then without a word (always without a word) vanished?

I could also hunt for my father's criminal records, my love once suggested. They're accessible to the public.

Arrests were made in Illinois, California and Wisconsin. This much I know. The details, the hearings, the sentences and even the prison facility have all been trampled by a hundred interpretations and lies since then.

You feel a lot of emotion, the love said. (He means guilt.) But maybe that's because you don't have all the facts. You only have the scraps other emotional people — such as your father — have given you. Maybe the facts will help you settle your mind. ( — your guilt.)

My youngest sister was only seven when most of it simmered down. But my other sister is only thirteen months younger than I am. My Irish twin. She remembers more than I do, I can tell. She harbors twice as much anger and hurt.

I bet she could tell you the name of every elementary school. I wonder whether she could tell you why or how we left each one.

Two summers ago, while driving my car back from New York to Los Angeles, I paused for a few days in the northern suburbs of Chicago. To visit the passenger's family.

Many of the street names and buildings sent harsh bolts through my brain. Less like memory, more like shouting: "Yes, yes, this is ringing a bell. But WHICH fucking bell??"

I want to do my research. (Need to.) One of the items on my bucket list of things to tackle before I turn 30 is to drive through various patches of Illinois to excavate my childhood.

But I can't do that yet. Not until my first book is published.

The manuscript for that book is done. It's been done. And it's been prowling around for a home.

Every time I attempt to edit that manuscript, it winces like a woman — a woman not exquisitely beautiful, but confident in her own right — forced onto a plastic surgeon's table.

I remember little from my life before age 12. I admit this on page 5. The manuscript is gorged with the emotions of a young woman who has few facts and a lot of imagination. The guilt is obvious. The love, also.

I fear that once I research my facts, I will want to shred that manuscript and begin from scratch. I will hate every word. Hate how willingly I set limitations on my knowledge. Hate how much I didn't know when I wrote those words.

But the poems are done. A healthy number of them are swishing around in the published universe. And I need to let them go.

They're not mine to keep handcuffed. They're not mine to gas to death.

So, God, Universe, first book judges, small presses, whoever: This is the real reason I'm begging you to publish my book.

I need you to take it away from me. I need to continue the rest of my life.

Perfectly mundane details worth heart-ing:

2011-03-21T03:12:00.002-04:00

* Acorn jelly curd. Sweetened crispy anchovies. And all other foods whipped up by desert-grandmother.

* White binder marked "Senior Seminar 2006. Tahquitz Pines Conference Center. Idyllwild, CA."

* Inside white binder: pastel drawing on black construction paper of a heart that is half ear. Words next to ear-heart: "Listen. Love."

* Mister puts webcam-me on the toilet while he shaves.

* Neutrogena MoistureShine Lip Soother in Glaze.

* Taught desert-grandparents to use Internet. Helped them create email account. Encouraged them to send first email to mom & uncles. Subject line: "Hey you bastards." Greeting: "Dear loved ones we're forced to love."

* 24-pack of Crayola crayons (complete with a cerulean crayon!) made with solar power.

* Sweet potato cake ornamented with frosting rats.

* Streaming the same Netflix film simultaneously from two separate computers = long distance movie date.

* Musical fusion: Indian vocals + Brit pop + electronic dance music = Cornershop & the Double 'O' Groove Of

* Email prayer circle: 16 people, 68 messages & counting.

* Fresh appreciation for the ampersand.

* Virgin America flight to New York City (with no known return date) in T-minus 23 days (with no plan, few things & buckets of faith).

The reason God isn't compelling

2011-03-19T21:29:00.004-04:00

is that, by sheer observation of the lives of the people who believe in him, God is either impotent or dead.

If there exists a God powerful enough to split open seas and rivers to nudge us safely to the other side, then shouldn't the hundreds of millions of people of faith who recite these stories be able to access that power?

(Yes.)

Both Jews and Christians claim to know this God of the Hebrew scriptures. What good is meditating on those vicious works of majesty — and ultimately, of justice and love — if the stories lie dormant on the page?

When we read the scriptures then nod and say, "Yes, this speaks to my life," we treat them as any other passionate text. Any other blog entry. Any other fleeting thread of imagination.

If that God of the scriptures is the same God whom those scriptures claim, "never changes," then he's still alive. Still mouthing off. Still rumbling, creating, watching. Yelling things from atop mountains and thrones. Sometimes, desperate things. Things such as:

"I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die?"

Unless I can commune personally and privately with the Creator of the Universe who performed those supposed wonders, "religion" means nothing to me. I have little patience for "tradition" or manmade rules or texts edited and interpreted by humans.

I want the meat of him. I want his spirit. I want God to introduce himself.

Then I want to know what it was that he said to Abraham. Moses. Joshua. The others. And WHY. I want to find that God — wherever he's run off to — and beg him to say the same to me.

Words from a human who says these are okay things to want — and expect:

"There is something about the way in which God comes upon us, and he says to us, 'I want to go in front of you. You have to let me go in front of you. Because if you let me go in front of you, you will have something to latch on to. Or else you're on your own. You can only latch on to bravery. Or you can only grit your teeth and hope that that action in itself will be okay.'"

"It is the presence of the Lord that is going to open up the River Jordan. Not your jumping in."

"God is not the one who says, 'Jump out there and good luck. See you on the other side.' No. God is the God who says, 'I'm with you. And I want you to the feel the weight of my presence even more than the weight of the situation.'"

I think I will sit still for a little while now.

Your life is a mountain,

2011-03-17T23:24:00.000-04:00

someone once said.

You go around and around the mountain to drive up to the top.

As you drive to the top, the view will sometimes look the same as it did before. But when the view and the drive feel familiar, you will actually be much higher than you were before.

The metaphor also works with a cinnamon bun.

Today, after receiving my fourth rejection of the week — this time, for something I desired ferociously — I showered. And in the shower, I sang praises. Loud praises. And I laughed.

Then I sent a $350 money order to a small literary organization in New York to study with some Asian American writers for three days in June. I've invested tens of thousands of dollars (and hours) into this passion. There's no backing out now.

But I need a new game plan.

What I mean by that is: Dear sovereign Creator God, if you would be gracious enough to turn your good face toward an irreverent, mouthy girl like me, the world will not hear the end of it. Please, if you will, I need the game plan.

Yes. I need ~~a new~~ the game plan.

Earlier tonight, as I bowed goodbye to my grandparents' guests (whom I hadn't spoken to all evening), one man turned to me and said, "Congratulations." I'm not sure what he was congratulating me for.

But I'll take it. Surely a good omen.

Before last Thursday — before the quakes,

2011-03-16T20:06:00.033-04:00

before the tsunamis — I had a series of dreams about the futures of people I know. It began weeks ago with a nurse and yet another banquet table.

Today, I woke up late from a dream that meant little to the man whose phone call pulled me out of it. It's disconcerting to sweep imagined rooms and wrestle imagined humans during the better part of my Wednesday morning.

Last night's dream has plagued my mind all day. It has funneled into two questions: What good is a beautiful home built on sand? What good is a beautiful home sore with cockroaches?

Now, when I worm my way out of each dream, I shut my eyes and pray: If this means nothing, let me forget it. But if you need to say something, consume me with your images.

This is why:

Today, I read and reread the backside of the twenty-third page of the journal I kept from July 13, 2010 to November 15, 2010.

The words [unedited] on that page:

Sunday. 09.19.2010
@ church. AM.

During worship/prayer, I remembered a vision I saw in my prayers a few weeks ago, but never wrote down:

I am walking across a beach, parallel with the ocean. Walking toward light. And to my left, the ocean roared and the waves reached the sky with crazy violence. To my right, the tallest of buildings collapsed. Wreckage everywhere. And God, saying, I will not be harmed. Just focus on him. Do not focus on the ruin. Just walk in that cleared path.

Last night, I stayed up revising and revising my manuscript. Also talked to M about our impending beasthood.

"Either give me my destiny
or give me a gun."

Really.

Then on the next page:

Something PM. Sun. 09.19.2010

Nightmares filled with the most anxious of situations lately. So many — too many — nightmares. Even while napping.

That vision, prayed again by me and S just now. Praying that whether the buildings and waters rise or crumble, they will have no affect on us because we're that focused on God.

That was six months ago.

I left the desert briefly this past weekend. On Friday evening, S and I scoured the Internet for updates from Japan. S retold her story of the 2005 tsunami in Sri Lanka, when she was driving to the beach as she got the phone call to turn the fuck around.

As we talked, S — in passing — said, "Oh like that vision you had a few months ago." And we both froze. As though Someone from above took our cords and plugged us into a dangerous outlet. Everything was eerie. We suddenly felt watched. As though a Giant Head from the sky had swiveled our way.

We happened to be in her apartment. This journal happened to be on the shelf in her apartment. I grabbed it. Flipped through it. And sure enough.

ju[ic]ebox: grape leaves, blank slates.

2011-03-15T15:40:00.002-04:00

wicked man's rest [ passenger]
dr. c [alias & tarsier]
viðrar vel til loftárása [sigur rós]
hold on [magnet]
make it mine [styrofoam]

So far: less than 48 hours in the desert.

2011-03-07T17:03:00.004-05:00

Well over 900 hours to go.

In October of 1884, Vincent van Gogh, at age 31, wrote the following to his younger brother:

"I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm — but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.

"Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can't do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all."

I face that paralysis every time I set out to write. During the past year, that blank Word document has taunted me like a giant Philistine warrior.

I have unconsciously come to adopt a pre-writing ritual to free myself from that paralysis: I bury my face in my hands and pray a mash of gibberish mostly along the lines of Please, please. Sometimes I say, hosanna — a Hebrew word that means both "help" and "praise."

Here I am, 119 miles from Los Angeles. A self-imposed writing retreat and meditation center. Mostly because of a dream. And forty-eight hours in, I am superficially connecting to the outer world via the Internet at a Starbucks.

What did Jesus do in his wilderness to escape his rabid thoughts? Perhaps he found a small cottage near his favorite rock. And in that cottage, a frail widow who brewed a mean tea. Perhaps every three days, Jesus took a break from dancing before God to indulge in slow conversation with the widow. A conversation about the mother he missed.

Or about the relentless winds, shaking the palms like maracas. And the mountains, which, he noticed and noticed, contrary to the Psalms, do not bow. "Yes!" the widow must have agreed. "They don't bow!"

And Jesus, in his purified wisdom, must have said, "How still they stand. The mountains — closer to God than the swaying palms, the shaky people. So close to God, they can do nothing but remain frozen in reverence — so as not to miss the tiniest, most negligible movement of God."

And then Jesus would have tipped his hat — should he have had a hat — and he would've strolled back to his wilderness. And perhaps every few hours, he wept. And once a week, perhaps he took a longer nap than usual.

Yesterday, I spent four hours in silence with ten talkative elderly people who spoke a language I understand in spurts when I devote excruciating attention to it.

I had ample time to daydream. I thought to myself what a pastor once said: "Don't turn theology into anthropology."

But that's all the theology I know.

God became human. That's the only story that ever appealed to me. And telling and retelling and fictionalizing and exploring and stretching and drilling in that story in all its true and irreverent evolutions — that's really all I care to write about. Nothing else interests me nearly as much.

A God who crammed himself into a man's body. And then was masochistic (or loving) enough to subject himself to one of the most searing deaths possible.

Whether you accept that story as truth or as myth, you have to admit: that tragedy is undeniably gorgeous. The ultimate tale of unrequited love.

The more viciously I write poetry, the more I realize that in art, nothing is random. Every line, broken with painstaking intention. Every object in every set design, meticulously arranged.

So then if there is a Creator out there — if that unrequited love story is true — then what if nothing is random? And if it is true, and nothing is random, then holy —

— doesn't that change everything? About what it means to be human? What it means to exist? The purpose of the person sitting next to me at this coffee shop! And this coffee shop, also an important prop in an even more important narrative.

Then why — in the name of everything spectacular and holy — are we stumbling forward, groping for our happy hours and weekends with our eyes pinned shut?!

If all that is true — the way they say it is — then shouldn't today MEAN something? Shouldn't it burst with delicious, purposeful details — the parts of the story that will set us up for the climax to come?

Yes. Yes. In short, a very loud 'Yes.'

I am expectant.

I don't follow celebrity media.

2011-03-04T17:20:00.002-05:00

I don't know the first thing about "reality television."

Most of my self-righteous opinions about that portal to the sloppy debauchery of strangers comes from the fact that I was once a perpetrator of that same sloppy debauchery, and have only recently "cleaned up" my act.

And I didn't clean it up so that I could sit on a futon and watch other people fuck up even more royally (while getting paid for it).

So when Charlie Sheen began to invade all of my social media feeds, I was curious. Then when even loved ones dropped the Sheen name in conversation, I was curious enough to Google the hoopla.

Charlie Sheen what? He threw a tantrum, riled up drama about his television show, threw together a Twitter account and then hashtagged #winning until over a million people jumped on his douche-wagon?

The entire world was Sheen happy. And I lost my tongue. In my livid mind, a fire darted back and forth in a cage. And I couldn't find my words.

Yesterday, a musician I follow on Twitter said, "Hey, remember when Charlie Sheen was arrested for beating his wife? How about when he shot his fiancee a while back? No? Ok, cool."

But I still kept silent. I didn't want to start that conversation.

I didn't want to crack open the box of fury I keep inside me in regard to domestic violence issues and in regard to celebrities who perpetuate the general American apathy toward violence against women. I knew that if I were to open my mouth, hell would ensue. Most of it, emotional. A lot of it, personal.

Then I read Anna Holmes' New York Times article on the Charlie Sheen craze and the public's sheeplike acceptance of gratuitous misogyny on screen.

And I asked myself: WHY haven't I said anything?

Anna Holmes' article was a relief to read. It assured me that other people were also uncomfortable with Sheen and his undeserved publicity. It assured me that if I spoke, someone else might say, "I agree."

So why did it take Anna's article for me to say something? Frankly, I didn't expect anyone to understand. Or care. I had bought into the general apathy, and I'd given up.

I expected no healthy discussion. I expected no sensitivity to women's issues. I expected only flippant baa-ing: "Oh, nobody takes him seriously." "This is just entertainment." "Well, that's America." "Well, that's money." "You have to admit, there's something to be said about a guy who can be that much of a dick and garner that many fans."

And I didn't want to hear it (lest I also get arrested for "accidentally" shooting someone).

When I see the unfettered popularity of people like Charlie Sheen, I ache. I ache as a woman and I ache as an artist.

It kills me that television producers and trash-news moguls are money hungry enough to brush away Sheen's "antics" and embrace him as a reliable cash machine.

As a woman who grew up in the throes of domestic violence's ugliest realities, I don't find the "Charlie Sheen is #winning" comments amusing. At all. In fact, I question the judgment of anyone who admires — or even humors — the fame and wealth of irresponsible, entitled assholes like Charlie Sheen.

It disgusts me that he is our highest paid television actor.

There is so much to be said for the lack of integrity and shameless apathy in film and television. I could rant for hours.

But at the end of the day, I am also an artist. And an unabashed idealist. I have friends who are talented actors, screenwriters and other visionaries in the tv/film industry. And those friends help me believe that the industry can be kicked in the ass and used to empower, educate and inspire.

No, I don't think all art has to be a Hallmark card. But I do believe creators have power. And they should wield that power to take strong stands in favor of a civil society that promotes equality and fair treatment for all.

Creators are people with voices. And it's dangerous — God, I wish they could see HOW dangerous — when the people with voices are the most apathetic of them all.

Read the Anna Holmes article. Please.

Our first shouting match happened less than two months ago.

2011-03-02T19:45:00.001-05:00

Outside a taco truck in Los Angeles.

We'd argued before and had lengthy "discussions," but this was different. A tad more precarious.

He was hurt.

I had said something along the lines of "Nothing can be perfect" in reference to love and relationships.

In tears, I stared hard at him — his good mouth declaring so many impossible words:

If love is God-given — if it's destiny — it has to be perfect. Everything else in life can and will fall apart. Love is the safe haven. It's where you go when you need to refuel. Love can't be the distraction. You should never waste your energy trying to "fix" love. Love has to be perfect.

A month prior, I had blogged something about people having to compromise to survive their relationships. "Compromise." Another word he disliked. You shouldn't have to change for love, he said. If two people are designed to love each other, they will fit perfectly. In every way. No assembly required.

Nothing is impossible, he said.

And he believed it. Like a man plucked from a fairy tale, he really believed it.

I watched his foreign words fire like bullets from his mouth. And one by one, they shattered everything I'd trained my jaded self to believe about the "reality" of relationships.

In Blue Valentine, Dean, the male protagonist, says:

I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married we marry, like, one girl 'cause we're resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think I'd be an idiot if I didn't marry this girl, she's so great. But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kind of pick the best option. 'Oh he's got a good job.' I mean, they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who's got a good job and is gonna stick around.

When I was twelve (or was I younger than that? —nine? —seven?), I had a dream, which I've never told anyone about.

I'm in an orange grove. An excruciatingly sunny, brilliant orange grove. Hundreds of small orange trees in every direction. I'm wearing a dress. I'm holding the hand of a blurry someone I'm madly in love with. We're running through the orange grove and we're laughing the entire time.

I was a young girl, and I woke up both elated and devastated.

I was suddenly aware that pure, untainted love was possible. But it was just a dream. So I etched the dream into my memory just in case.

By the time I was twenty-five (or maybe much earlier than that), I'd locked away that dream. I'd had relationships of all shapes and sizes and degrees of intensity, but nothing that ever duplicated that elated feeling.

Then a little over eight months ago, I found him.

When I say I recognize him from another life, I don't mean this figuratively. I mean I remember him from the dream. I recognize his laugh. His unfaltering smile — the smile that makes me feel safe. And found.

Before I met him, even while I was dating other guys, I dreamt often about that blurry man (always holding my hand, mostly in the context of him leading a pack of survivors with me during the apocalypse).

I used to grow frustrated because I would go to bed hoping I would dream about my then-boyfriend(s), but would wake up with another vivid memory of this stranger.

I've tracked my dreams for the last eight months, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that since he's entered my life, that blurry man has disappeared. Instead, I dream about this man almost every night. The literal man of my dreams.

The first week I met him — long before I had relinquished my cynicism and before I got my meteor shower of signs — I called my best friends, my sisters and my mother. Ecstatic and in a frenzy, I told each of them: "I found him. I swear on everything I know, I found him."

Nobody believed me at the time. I was an unreliable narrator. I sounded crazy.

Even now, I downplay the perfection of our relationship because I'm afraid of coming off as being delusional or blind.

But the truth is, I love him more now than I did during the "honeymoon period." We've come to understand each other in the most intimate, spiritual ways. We've developed a gorgeous rhythm. And our love deepens every day.

I was afraid that watching Blue Valentine would destroy me a little. I understood the wretchedness of the characters so viscerally. But the only reason I felt sad afterward was this thought: "That was almost me."

My past self identified with the characters very much. But my present self wanted to hop into the movie screen and shout, "Take heart! The right person is out there dreaming about you!"

That strange, unfamiliar romanticism jarred me.

I cried last night. Not because I was sad, but because I was grateful. And surprised. I missed him. But I also didn't. Three thousand miles away, he feels infinitely closer to me than any other human has ever been, whether physically next to me or not.

Yes, I know. I sound like a fool.

I blog quite a mouthful about love,

2011-02-28T04:24:00.005-05:00

faith, power, destiny, blahblahfuckingblah.

[The following content is not suitable for persons sensitive to the likes of 'fuck' and 'shit' and so forth.]

Yes, I'm having a blahblahfuckingblah ~~evening~~ moment. Doesn't everybody? I once (twice?) asked the mister, "Do you think the greats ever sat around on the couch to do nothing?"

He said, "Yes. Even Obama needs to veg in front of the TV sometimes."

Biographies should give us less "and then x wrote the third masterpiece" and more "before x wrote the third masterpiece, she wasted two months with a blender full of rum and bad pineapples."

I've done nothing but swim in my laptop for six hours.

SIX fucking hours and nothing to show for it except a thousand run-on thoughts twisting into one crazy, imagined mind-hell. Help. Someone has hammered open a fire hydrant in my brain. (!)

The next poem a journal will publish is one about my hell months with my father in Korea. Now that he regularly stalks my twitter and doesn't hesitate to scrawl words like "whore" all over my Interwebs, how the fuck — repeat: how the fuck — am I supposed to shrug well enough to publicize myself and my good-ish poem? I fear I may chicken out and not announce this one to my, um, two fans via Interwebs. (( COWARD! )) Roar.

YOU EFFING STALKER, YOU RUINED MY ENTIRE PURPOSE FOR A PSEUDONYM. Before I even had it for a year! Before I even published one book! Why couldn't my parents be computer illiterate as all well-behaved parents should be?

Oh and I couldn't give less of a twizzler about this how-to-be-a-happy-billionaire piece of shit non-fiction book I'm ghostwriting.

News flash, dear men of the twenty-first century. Your fancy "men's book" brought to you by your schmancy life coach was written by me: a distraught 26-year-old female poet in the wild throes of menstruation.

I wonder if vague confessions to this ranting degree violate my writer's contract.

I need a nap. And a warm shot of whiskey.

Speaking of whiskey, I'm thisclose to writing a Dear John letter to my boss to crawl back behind the bar and serve ugly cocktails until my words have finally infected the world well enough for me to buy eggs, toilet paper and a hot loft in Soho with my royalties. In some ways, wrecking myself as a barslut seems easier than trucking by as a starving artist.

But what kind of a biography ends with "and then she took the easy way out and died in a pool of vodka"?

God damn you, Lessons Learned.

Why must you ring so loudly in my beaten head? This church thing is really starting to brainwash me ~~well~~ good. Or this stable relationship thing. Or this adulthood thing. Whatever it is, I don't like that it laughs and squeals "LIES!" every time I say, "I'm better off as a bartender."

I don't like that it's right.

I don't like that I'm going to take a short nap now, indulge in a quick nightmare, then get up, scrub off my thoughts with a shower, write a fantastic little chapter for that life coach and then spend 11 more healthy hours working. With no whiskey. And lots of dirty soy chai.

Or maybe I do like it.

The struggle is part of the glory. Or some shit.

"...fuckity, shit, shit, fuck and willy. Willy, shit and fuck and... tits." — The King's Speech.

It's not that I had a rough week,

2011-02-27T18:51:00.003-05:00

I see in hindsight.

It's that everyone else did.

How did I get here? Back to being the makeshift oracle to whom they chuck their infections and cry, "Please pass this to your God for me."

I drove a stranger to a (good) strange church today.

She said, "Then I realized that I was living everybody else's life and losing mine. So I packed my things and drove from Cincinnati to these snowcapped mountains and ocean."

The good book doesn't say, "Consider all their needs and make a wise decision that benefits everyone." It says, "Go to the land I will show you." Will show. Future tense. With no hint of "them" or "everyone."

In the dream, my car was parked outside my best friend's apartment, where I've been crashing for several months. I went downstairs to move it from its metered spot and found the window smashed in.

In real life, this past winter, my sister's car window was smashed in outside my mom's apartment. Then my boyfriend's roommate's car also, the morning he needed to use it to pick me up from the airport.

In the dream, those other two cars flashed through my mind and I cried out, "Is there nowhere I can go? Not to my mother's place, not to my boyfriend's place, not to my best friend's place? Is there nowhere that is safe?"

And a whirlwind stirred within me and whistled, "Yes. Go to the desert." Then after that dream, over and over again in real life: Yes, yes, yes. Go to the desert. Yes.

Forty days, forty nights in the desert (hopefully beginning Wednesday). How's that for cliché?

A preparation, of sorts. A consecration of myself for what is yet to come. What is yet to come? I'm not fully sure. (...the land I will show you). But I see it breathing. I see it wiggling at the end of those forty days.

M said to me today: Forty days! Yes, good. That is a luxury. We all need that time to go away and do that.

Unbelievably refreshing. To hear someone say, "Yes." And not "But what about — "

Expectant. Fiery.

Dear M, the newest human I know.

2011-02-26T04:23:00.013-05:00

You've been alive for a wild 14 hours and 33 minutes.

The first moment I held all seven pounds and five ounces of you in the hospital room, it took every muscle in my body to keep me from shattering into a weepy mess in front of your parents and grandparents.

I felt you breathe — heavily — with your whole body. Like a very serious man.

At one point, I announced to the room, "For all we know, we're in the presence of the future President of the United States." The seven other adult heads swung reverently in your direction with a chorus of "oohs" and "ahhs."

Suddenly, we were awakened to what you represent. Possibility. Blank slates. Complete, uninhibited openness to what majesty the Universe might have for you. For each of us.

I'm convinced you've arrived to teach us something. To deliver a message from The Other Side. I will wait patiently for that message while you gather your first words.

We're going to have some grand conversations, you and I. You can tell me anything. Always. I'm one adult you can count on to understand the impossible things you will say are true. Not everyone will, and that's okay.

Just remember: I believe in angels too, Mister President.

Dear Editors

2011-02-24T13:00:00.009-05:00

of Memoir (and):

Thank you for your prudent (and minor) suggestions for my poem, "Can These Bones Live." I apologize for sitting on your email for 54 days.

Though I responded only this morning, that's not to say that I haven't xeroxed and shredded copy after copy of both the poem and your suggestions, and eaten bowlfuls of those syllables every morning for weeks.

What you don't know is this:

Last September, fifteen days before you asked for my two poems — both of which veer into explicit details about two of my most fissured interactions with my father — my father Googled me. And unearthed my pseudonym.

A year prior to his sleuthing, when I first created the pseudonym, it occurred to me that in order to obliterate any possibility of him finding me, I should reinvent my entire biography and omit details such as the name of my graduate school or my ethnicity. But my conscience (integrity? fear? pride? idiocy?) wouldn't allow it.

I could barely even change my name.

I took my father's mother's maiden name, gave it an American, first-name spelling, then adopted that as the pseudo-half of my -nym.

How Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto had the balls to shear off his identity and become Pablo Neruda (to avoid his father, funnily enough), I don't understand.

I wrote "Can These Bones Live" without meaning to. It was what they call a "gift poem." One that heaved out of me in a lump sum as though I were birthing a grown, balding man and not an infant.

I wept through its creation, and perhaps I haven't touched much of it or ever really shown it to anybody because it's difficult to relive those moments, however subtly they were hinted at in that muted representation of two of the most bloodsucking months of my life.

Gah!

I don't know why I'm talking like that. All long sentences and "subtly"s.

This poem is a prayer. This poem sinks its teeth into a passage in Ezekiel. I don't love this poem. I hold my breath every time I read it. I don't don't don't want can't please don't want my father to find this one.

It's not that the story is difficult to tell.

It's just difficult to know that no meticulously sculpted phrase could ever perfectly capture those months. It's difficult to know that no one can ever really get it.

"... I sat in one chair / for days at a time. His right eye twitched. He crouched / in the bathroom for hours sometimes."

A secret file folder marked "2nd Book"

2011-02-23T18:03:00.002-05:00

sits on my desktop.

Second book? Laugh. My first book, still a manuscript — a small 47-poem foster child of hushed violence — is hunting tirelessly for a home while hopping from book contest to book contest. And here I am, already attempting to conceive a second one. And not very well, I might add.

I have a problem. The problem is that I can't un-believe.

I'm so delusional (or optimistic or arrogant) that I sincerely believe that my first book is done. It's been done. It's simply ... not published (yet). "God willing," it'll happen eventually. Preferably sooner than later.

But my delusion extends beyond the hope of publishing those poems. I'm convinced that there's a second book — a magical book — lying dormant in my fingers.

There are 27 items in my file folder. I created the first item in June. In New York. A TextEdit file called, "CRAP."

A strange aside: I created the file on a Wednesday morning, and that very afternoon, exactly eight months ago today, I texted (for the first time) the man who would become my partner in crime. I revel in timing and coincidence.

The files have titles ranging from "Selah" to "Timing in War" to "Dream with alien green soul ring on index." Some notes ask vague, impatient questions: "Where do the broken people go???" I collect the ancient names of stars: Hassaleh.

And they all mean almost nothing to me.

Every note, which pulsed incandescent at the time of its creation, is flat. Nonsensical. And I'm about to lose my mind.

In my mind, there are nine thousand half-evolved creatures — each one juggling a hundred amputated stories. I don't know what to do with them. Some of them make me cry. Some of them threaten me in my sleep.

Others order me to pray, to whom I say, "How did you trespass my file folder? Who are you? What have you to say to me??" But before they can respond, new voices demand my attention.

So far, nothing. My second book is sheet after sheet of nothing.

On Valentine's Day, the mister and I visited an independent bookshop in the West Village. We browsed the store, then dawdled in front of the humble poetry section. I picked up a book from the shelf second to the bottom. And something which only happens in movies happened.

I picked up the book and felt a sudden flash in my mind. Like a memory from a separate lifetime. It was a story. I could make out its blurry skeleton in my mind's eye.

I ran the idea by the mister, who thought it could go somewhere. I consulted my nurse/editor best friend, who got excited about it. And last night, at a Jewish deli, I told it to my other best friend, who laughed at me and said, "You look like you're going to cry!"

This nine-day-old idea refuses to disintegrate. Unlike the others, this story is one that I secretly believe is true. As absurd, surreal and unlikely as it is, I believe that this story has happened (or will happen) in some alternate universe (or this one?!).

I've managed to spit out 610 words to try to flesh it out, but 566 of them are lies. They sound too much like me. I keep asking, what really happens in this story, but I hear only faint affirmations that seem to come from a time-space continuum far away from this one. How do I get to that place?

I came to this blog an hour ago to complain about my lack of inspiration and take a break from my day job as a non-fiction ghostwriter.

As I began to write this entry, I realized that I'm waiting for one of the people from that universe to make contact with me.

A few sentences ago, I paused and pulled up a file called, "Notes 7.18.10," where I ran into a stunning, quiet old man. I found him on top of the Empire State Building. He wore a pair of electrician gloves the color of cold sand.

I said, "Do you have a story for me?"

He said, "Sit down. And stop saying 'story.'"

He said, "This is important."

The part of the story we don't tell is this:

2011-02-17T20:17:00.003-05:00

Moses never made it to the Promised Land.

He croaked before he could. All that walking for decades upon decades, and nothing to show for it. That's one way of looking at it.

The other way is this:

He spent the first several decades of his life delighting in a simple life with a simple wife in a simple corner of earth. He lived nothing worth writing about, but he never questioned where his next meal would come from.

Moses lived a stable life. He owned land probably. Maybe some goats, some gold.

But when he happened upon that flame-ridden bush that didn't burn, he removed his sandals. And the moment he removed his sandals, the world tilted. Moses' unconscious mind was shaken open to the presence of a great Voice.

As Moses wrapped his mind around a bush that could be engulfed in flames while remaining in tact, and around a Voice that dared to provide specific directions for his future, I imagine the goats and gold he'd accumulated suddenly lost all vitality. Nothing sparkled anymore. Nothing could ever compare to this spectacle.

That little teaser miracle was a drug. And Moses wanted more. He wanted it enough to trade the good life he'd built.

Had someone told Moses that he would never enter the Promised Land, would he still have ventured out to free the Israelites from the Egyptians and wander for forty years? I think so.

I like to imagine the ride was worth it. A sea split open. Bread fell from the sky. Water gushed from a rock. Every day was a fresh challenge, but each challenge was an opportunity for Moses to experience what the universe — his God — could stir up.

He traded his stability for a whirlwind of impossibility.

What we need in order to make our own trade and dive headfirst into that life is a burning bush moment.

And I believe that if the biblical God exists, then he must be secure enough and loving enough to handle our petty human demands for such a moment.

"Show me, and I will follow you." It sounds like a cop-out. A refusal to step out in faith. An immature entitlement to signs. But if the Bible is an accurate depiction of God's words, he repeatedly says that this is an okay thought to have.

In Jeremiah 29, he says, "For I know the plans I have for you ... then you will call on me and pray to me, and I will listen to you." In Isaiah 45, he says, "I summon you by name / and bestow on you a title of honor, / though you do not acknowledge me," and also, "I will strengthen you, / though you have not acknowledged me, / so that ... people may know there is none besides me."

Isaiah 30 says, "How gracious [God] will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you." Then it says that when you walk to the left or to the right, you will hear that Voice behind you saying, "This is the way; walk in it." What's interesting is Isaiah says THEN, you will "desecrate your idols" and throw them away.

God talks first, you start to follow. Then as you follow and you hear God sticking around, you learn to give up your stability and your crutches.

Yes, faith is not based on "seeing." Everyone tells us this. What faith is not. What they don't tell us is what faith IS. Faith is based on "hearing."

I'm not a preacher by any means. I'm not a biblical scholar. For all I know, everything I've said here is a load of manure. So test it out. Ask questions. Talk to God and sit still long enough for him to talk back.

Maybe the silence is God clearing his throat and taking a sip of mineral water because he's got a lot to say.

What I do know is that there's no formula for trusting God and stepping forth toward a divine "destiny." If God is a creator of mankind, then we can see he's wild enough to make all kinds of odd humans. And if that's the case, then I doubt God expects all of us to follow him in one specific way.

Abraham followed God in his own way. Moses, an entirely different way.

Sometimes, I find myself so fixated on the "Promised Land" that I'm not fully devoted to the present. To the bush. The sea. The rock. I can become so obsessed with the future that I miss the miracles along the way and miss the Voice bathing the room I'm writing in now.

Four years ago, I asked for my burning bush. A year after that, I got it. And only a few months ago did I finally stop resisting God. But during the last few years, that burning bush stuck with me. It kept me on my risky career path.

That's the memory keeping me here now.

Don't give up. Ask for that burning bush. I swear on everything I know, you'll get it.

The tree branches snagged my umbrella in its low tangles.

2011-02-17T05:57:00.008-05:00

It was dark. One a.m. dark. And it was pouring.

I didn't see the tree.

I gripped the umbrella handle and did a swoosh here, a pull there and freed it from the menacing tree. The things (and humans) that are meant to protect you have the potential to harm when they — and you — don't have enough light as you both move forward.

Lately, I've been wrestling with the realization that not only am I a made thing. I am a poor draft of what I hope to become.

I suppose my one redeeming quality is that I have ambitions of being better than I am.

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a close friend who eyed me sideways and said words along the lines of, You know, most people think you're this shattered person who is morally confused and entirely not well adjusted.

I know, I said.

But that's not who you are.

Sure, I said.

So why do you think people have that perception?

I let them think I'm damaged, I said. Plus, I have neither the time nor the energy nor the desire to convince people otherwise.

Flaunting my best qualities isn't my modus operandi. I live to expose myself of my humanity, and in doing so, attempt to strip anybody within hearing distance of his pedestal until we're all barefoot on the same playing field.

I live to hear humans admit, we are all the same. Not one of us better, not one of us worse. There's a rapist inside all of us. A harsh belief, but one I've held firmly since I was a little girl.

I'm not self-loathing. I'm not insecure. I'm mostly an optimist. An equality-for-all social liberal. I'm well aware of my talents. I have plenty of friends. As cut up as they were, my parents still told me I was smart, pretty and that they loved me. Every day of my life. I also didn't grow up with the version of church that breeds unhealthy guilt.

My many "I'm a fuck up" admissions — the ones that have successfully led you and the rest of my stalkers and most of my good friends to believe that I really am a fuck up — stem from something I learned when I was ten years old.

You see, as soon as I picked up enough English, I wrote my first (well, only) award-winning story when I was seven. I wrote a series of short "books" for my sister when I was nine. And then when the darker universe caught on and realized what I would become — (a master world changer who cures impossible ailments of the heart with simple sentences) — it taught me to use my powers for evil.

So when I was ten (not surprisingly, the first time my dad ever went to jail), I learned how to poison people with words. I learned how to intuit a person's deepest insecurities and then spill evil sentences into those wounded places. I was a hurt child. I was a hurt child too proud to play the victim, so I learned to cope by hurting others.

I soon learned to feel remorseful. Eventually, I learned that hurting people came with boomerang-like consequences that would, plainly, make me feel like shit, too.

As a young adult, I learned to write on and on about what an awful person I am — not as confession, not as penance, but as a desperate attempt to locate empathetic others and prove to myself that I'm not the only human who is so ... human.

What frightens me now is that my "evil power" became so natural, sometimes it still turns on without my noticing. I'm twenty-six years old. A writer, even. And I still use my words to lash out at people.

My friends say I'm a good person. Several people — even ones who've felt the brunt of my lashing out — have chosen to continue to love me.

Stop with that talk. You're not a rapist, they'd say.

Sure I am, I'd say. Or I could be. Didn't Jesus die for everyone? He didn't slice off an arm for one person and stab himself in the chest for another.

Your greatest strength can be your greatest weakness. Where is that from? Is it biblical? And does this mean that my greatest weaknesses can be my greatest strengths?

You're a lot closer to where you want to be, said my friend during that lunch. Your a lot closer to that person you want to be than you think you are.

That was nice to hear.

Even though that's not true of me every day.

I'm [not] a napkin holder.

2011-02-13T08:21:00.006-05:00

Two and a half years ago, L asked our poetry workshop,

"What is the reason the artist
was unable to remain silent?"

She sifted through each poem with a dozen tools of craft. This one — emotional impulse. The emotional impulse answers why the poem was written. Why the artist was unable to remain silent.

It wasn't enough to know the mechanics of poetry and identify how each piece was crafted through its line breaks, metaphors, leaps and hinges. The crafted thing had to have a purpose.

Of course, not every piece of art will possess a grand purpose. Very few are meant to melt evil dictators off their thrones. But every creation was once in the hands of a maker. And all makers, all artists — yes, I dare say, all — create with a purpose in mind for the thing being formed.

Even postmodern pieces that are designed to deny purpose answer to an emotional impulse: to frustrate the idea that a made thing needs to have purpose at all.

Two weeks ago, I pointed to a ceramic napkin holder at my best friend's home. All sobs and wild coughs, I exclaimed, THIS IS WHAT I AM.

Then I proceeded to grab the napkin holder, brandish it vigorously and say, But what the hell IS this thing?

The ceramic napkin holder was nothing more than an oddly shaped lump of tile bent in half with an inch-wide space left between the two halves. Until the artist painted the outside of this bent thing and scrawled the letters N-A-P-K-I-N-S across both sides, nobody knew whether to hang it with the ceiling plant or fling it for the dog to fetch.

The problem with exploring and deepening my belief in God is the increasing realization that I am a made, handcrafted thing.

As an artist, I'm accepting this awkward reality with a slew of reactions. Shock. Remorse. Gratitude. Amusement. Relief.

Accepting the idea of a Creator of humans has unexpectedly shifted my worldview. Suddenly, I ask new, more impressive questions. I grant meaning to the stupidest things. And everything makes sense. My life is a foreign film and someone finally switched on the subtitles.

Why this "I'm a napkin holder" idea is important to me:

Every cross-wearing, well-intentioned fool on this planet has tried to convince me that God has a "divine purpose" for me.

I would say, "But I was an accident." They would say, "God doesn't make accidents." And I would say, "No, I really was. My dad was a kid. He fucked my mom, who was also a kid. She got pregnant. She quit college. Trust me. That wasn't divine."

I refused to believe that God would allow all the shit that ensued with the bad marriage [note the understatement] simply to birth me. For one thing, I couldn't handle that level of pressure.

Then my trusty train of thought traveled here:

When I create, some of my best work comes from the fuck-ups. The unintentional. Sometimes, when I'm trapped in a wreck, my emotions pull words from me better than I ever can when I set aside healthy "writing time." In those frenzied moments, I birth the most unexpected words.

But although the catalyst for those words was unplanned, I still craft them with love, focus and so much desire. I shake the words, erase them, restitch them and chisel each line until I unearth the poem's unique purpose.

By fleshing out this analogy, I've successfully convinced myself that if Creator God exists and if I am a made thing, then despite the fact that I was conceived accidentally, I have a specific purpose.

And if I have a specific purpose, then what am I flitting around for? I demand to know what that purpose is! I refuse to be hung from the ceiling or thrown to the dogs. I want my Creator to etch my real name and purpose in bold letters where everyone can see so that I will exist to my fullest, most satisfying potential.

My irreverent prayer for the year is, "If I'm a napkin holder, fucking say so already so that I can be the best damn napkin holder there ever was." You get the idea.

What is the reason God was unable to remain still?

Why shove another feisty Korean American girl into the motley of humans littering this sad planet? Am I decoration? Am I twelve books on one shelf at the local bookstore?

Or am I a good, strong wrecking ball?

How can I not ask? And if God exists, how can he refuse to answer such an honest question that will only help him [her/it] be better known and understood?

"Literature, music and art

2011-02-06T21:42:00.001-05:00

are the first and most sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt. They reflect the dark picture of the present time and show the importance of what at first was only a little point of light noticed by few and for the great majority non-existent.

Perhaps they even grow dark in their turn, but on the other hand they turn away from the soulless life of the present towards those substances and ideas which give free scope to the non-material strivings of the soul."

— Wassily Kandinsky. From Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

On the rare, wall-shattering occasion,

2011-01-31T03:58:00.001-05:00

I emerge — almost sparkling — from a night like this one.

Despite the lingering phlegm-filled coughs, the searing pricks in the chest and the vomiting, I feel whole. Healthy. Healthy in an otherworldly sense. I feel freshly awakened from a coma.

Last night, I dreamt that I was on life support.

I was strapped like a mental patient to an unstable cot in a warehouse that appeared to be a makeshift clinic in a developing country. My cot was plugged in to a wall. The plug and outlet were oddly oversized — about two feet by two feet — and no one could pull it from the wall. My entire dream, I wished I could die.

I woke up late. Distressed. I was in a funk. A funk that seemed to have ballooned over several weeks and countless nightmares.

Then I received a text message that said, "I feel funky," which made me boil inside. A singular funk was one thing. But a funk that had spread and infected the people I love? We were supposed to be gobbling up our destinies. Not sinking in a self-focused, anxious haze!

So without fully believing it, but desiring it madly, I replied, "God will deliver. Really expect great things. Today, love." And then I pretended to have faith.

Call it the power of suggestion. Call it whatever you want. But a few hours after that, completely by "chance," with the help of some angels and a large pot of chili, I ended up in a time warp with my two best friends.

We were all busy. We didn't mean to meet. One even parked her car in the center of a cul-de-sac because she was simply dropping off a few quince seeds.

Our conversation began with casual banter. We'd gone to dinner and a movie together nine days ago, but we hadn't been fully present to each other in ages. We cooed over sonogram pictures. Fed each other sweet synopses of our lives.

"It feels like it's been a hundred years since we talked," we managed to say while still not really talking.

I needed to work. S needed to study. R needed to sleep. We voiced these needs out loud. Multiple times. But we remained still. At the dining room table. We remained still — paralyzed by our unconscious need to hear something beyond our selves.

We remained long enough to let our small talk take a vicious turn into that realm of thoughts we have when we are the most afraid, the most doubt-ridden. We were brave, then, to open up our conversation to a higher power. And in that lengthy conversation with Power, iron gates began to melt.

Crooked roads straightened themselves. The day's rain cracked the ground open and gold filled every pothole. Every gnawing insecurity and fear I'd accumulated in the last few months shriveled into a Tic-Tac I could swallow and shit out. While laughing.

We opened our tear-glazed eyes. Our mouths agape. And when R said, "The clouds parted," I thought, "My God, what an understatement."

We knew things we couldn't have known about each other. R said something to me that I'd heard in a dream a few days ago. She quoted to S the exact words S had heard earlier in the day. We spoke out each other's thoughts. Listened to each other's spirits.

What surprised us was this:

We didn't pray out of desperation the way we used to. We didn't "ask" for "things." Instead, we prayed out of wild gratitude.

Instead of examining our lives and requesting more of what small goodness we'd experienced, we were suddenly able to zoom in on that small amount of goodness. Then we offered that goodness back to the Loving Hand that first planted it in our lives.

The zooming in helped us realize that we didn't have to beg anymore.

The more vibrant that small goodness got, the more fully we understood: Greater goodness — immense power — IS coming. By focusing on what little we'd already received, we no longer prayed based on the probability or the possibility of the thing we were praying for. We prayed based on the character of the One who would answer. The One who possesses and provides all goodness.

Praying was no longer a matter of asking.

It was a matter of declaration.

ju[ic]ebox: organic licorice root & melodies fit for the desert.

2011-01-24T05:21:00.000-05:00

safe without [interpol]
shell games [bright eyes]
the verb [the swell season]
runaway [kanye west]
adventures in solitude [the new pornographers]

"The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality

2011-01-24T01:02:00.000-05:00

by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky."

— Rainer Maria Rilke.

Exactly seven years ago,

2011-01-23T04:50:00.006-05:00

on one of my old xanga sites [xanga.com/her_life], I scribbled a 918-word entry titled, "My Thursday Adventure: Escape from South Campus." I was in college. I'd gotten marvelously lost in the math and sciences building. And that humble excursion was eventful enough to write about.

In it, I say, "I hopped on to the elevator. Literally."

This made me smile. My nineteen year old self would hop into an elevator. And then blog about it.

Two days prior, I had written about a "breakthrough conversation" with my father. I wish to pieces that someone healthy and wise would have entered my life to guide me through the emotional maelstrom that would ensue.

Or maybe all of those little glitches and paper cuts and gashes in the knees were necessary. Oh, the awkward beginnings of a poet.

I have a spectacular tolerance for pain. But not in the usual sense. I react extravagantly to all pain — physical and emotional. I'm an expressive person. But I recover gracefully. And fast. I possess powers of mind-control over myself. And if I say, "Get over it," I'll get over it. (This has pissed off and confused a few exes).

Admission: I have zero purpose for writing this entry.

I'm simply waiting for my NyQuil to kick in. And I want to bury my last entry without having to privatize it.

Seven years ago, I wrote: "i have to admit i like 'her_life' as my user name because if you dare to subscribe, the xanga lords tell you that you've 'now subscribed to her life.' it just sounds beautifully eerie."

It's nice to know that I've remained consistently narcissistic in my writing. ::smug grin::

... Please don't leave me. I need your good eyeballs.

People are asking about you, he texted.

2011-01-23T01:28:00.005-05:00

Even important people. It's sad, he said.

I said, So if I die, people would notice? That's always nice to know. Then I said, I'm right here. I've been here this whole time. Orange County isn't very far. And what important people?

You can be here physically without being emotionally present, he said. And when you check out emotionally, the next thing we know, you're packing your bags to leave Los Angeles.

I'll be in LA for at least another week, I said. And Palm Springs is only two hours away. You can come visit.

He exclaimed, What?! See??

And because I wasn't in the mood to rant about being boxed into a formula — and because he was partly right — I sent my friend a few happy emoticons and promised him a conversation.

When I left Los Angeles for New York in 2008, I left to patch the holes I'd identified in my self. My patience for sunshine and mainstream people was wearing thin.

I needed to indulge my cravings for pretentious conversation on poesy. I didn't want to read books and watch films. I wanted to discuss them. I wanted people who could turn pages as though they were undressing a lover — memorizing every line, delighting in every scar, every pause.

I wanted a life of elevators and strangers who'd say, at 1AM, "I'm not tired." Strangers who would expect me to reply, "Then let's go do something." Strangers who would then turn into lifelong friends.

Two years later, I'd stored up enough talk of aesthetics and obscure music to return to the dry heat and its silkier ocean. I suddenly felt a sharp imbalance in my self again. This time, I hungered for spiritual fulfillment. A beauty that transcends color and syllable.

I had loved skirting through and through hoards of New Yorkers. But now I wanted to be alone. Alone with a thousand good angels and the Spirit, if he would have me.

My friends in Los Angeles are like family. They are the people I can pray with. But they can only meet a specific portion of my needs. Sometimes, I'm afraid this hurts them. They don't understand why I always run off to hunt for my own adventures.

My family-friends and I have vastly different artistic interests. We don't love the same books. We don't love the same films. We don't love the same music. When I sat alone in the second row as Mark Z. Danielewski performed The Fifty-Year Sword in downtown Los Angeles, I ran a mental list of the people in New York who would've loved to have been there.

I sometimes grow weary of making unfiltered comments out loud around my Los Angeles friends only to have them shoot me funny looks and say, "Oh, you artist, you." I once gave a very private copy of my manuscript to one of my best friends and she said she could only read it in small doses.

But there were so many times in New York when I'd sit and pray on a giant rock in Central Park and would wish I had someone to pray with.

The people I love understand that they only see a limited facet of my personality. I love to talk books. But I also love people who can talk my ear off about astrophysics. I love poems written by both Jeffrey McDaniel and King David.

I don't think art needs to be didactic or "spiritual." I love art that delivers simply for art's sake. I can enjoy something visually even if it claims to have no meaning. But I also value and need art that can break my heart and sink me to my knees.

I've had conversations with my New York friends that I could never have with my Los Angeles friends. And vice versa.

You see him so often, one friend said.

That's because he's here. Before he came to visit this month, we didn't see each other for four weeks, I said.

'Four weeks' surprised her. The mister just spent two and a half weeks with me, and I know that some of my friends fear I've become 'that girl' who abandons the people she loves because she's found a man.

D and I try to spend good chunks of our time together hanging out with other people. Though yes, when I see him, I want to see lots of him. But it's not just because he's my 'boyfriend.'

It's because I finally found a friend who understands and loves every aspect of who I am. I can be the most myself around him and not feel foreign.

When we walked into the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, one of the presenters pointed to her moving graphics — a visual piece full of lines and blocks of color. The presenter motioned toward her artist and said, "We've got our very own Picasso." As we walked past her display, I muttered to myself, "Looks more like a Mondrian," and D caught what I said and agreed.

Details like that tiny moment are what matter.

Details like him downloading both Vladimir Nabokov and Watchman Nee for our Kindles.

Just as I was meeting more people who could understand me wholly, I left New York. Was there a purpose? Yes. Do I feel that purpose coming to an end? Honestly, yes.

I can't create as well in Los Angeles. I never could. I feel emotionally stifled here. Stifled by expectations, anxieties and rules. Too many people here care and worry about me. And their thoughts and questions and boxed-in ideas of me seep into my writing, and I'm less able to write freely. It might sound crazy to some of you. But others of you understand exactly exactly exactly what I mean.

That's only one reason I'm leaving.

Whenever an urge beckons me to leave a place, I am questioned. I love the questioning. Sometimes, the questions make me rethink and stay. But if I'm meant to leave, the questions only propel me further away.

So here:

I'm relocating to Palm Springs for a bit. Then spending about a month or two in New York for a variety of reasons. Then going back to Palm Springs until I know what literary organization — if any — will take me in the fall.

And if none take me, then chances are good that I'm moving back to New York (or to Taiwan or Argentina or Fiji — really — depending on a slew of circumstances).

I'm thrilled to see what gorgeous words will fall from all this physical instability. I love shaking things up and watching the cracks snake through my walls.

"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." — Leonard Cohen.

Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife

2011-01-20T20:02:00.023-05:00

that he's going out to buy an envelope.

He writes:

Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Some of us prefer to sacrifice efficiency for the chance of gaining genuine, human interaction. Sometimes — today, today, today — I don't care about getting 'it' done fast or getting 'it' done at all. I'd kill for a smile. Just one real smile.

~~"...you're getting in the way."~~

~~Kurt Vonnegut didn't look at the woman with the dog and say, "You're getting in the way of me purchasing an envelope." He stopped. He asked what kind of dog it was.~~

~~We're human. We're not robots. We get distracted. And — as Paulo Coelho tweeted two days ago — "If we are wasting time and enjoying ourselves, we are not wasting time."~~

~~(But Kafka once said, "Evil is whatever distracts.")~~

I don't want to be anybody's "distraction." I don't want to get in the way. I just want ten minutes of honest, loving conversation. Then a kiss or something that suffices for one. And I'll be on my merry way. On days like today, I want — more than anything — those stupid, menial occurrences that inject tiny spurts of humanity into our otherwise emotionless lives.

I know — I know — that there's a giant logical disconnect between the Vonnegut excerpt and what I'm trying to say. I know that I'm making little sense because I'm speaking out of my emotional asshole.

~~My point is this:~~ I miss you.

~~At the risk of sounding hedonistic, let me ask you this: if we can't enjoy the hell out of every dumb thing we do, why do them at all?~~

~~And what if we abided by this:~~ If something — anything — gets in the way of us loving the shit out of the people we're meant to love, put. it. down.

~~Humans are NEVER what get in the way. Fuck that. Everything else is secondary. Always.~~

"Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face."

2011-01-14T01:44:00.040-05:00

On the wall of this coffee shop: an eleven-inch by eleven-inch painting of an angular face (think Picasso/Matisse). Slits for eyes sliding downward to indicate grief. Sad clown lips — thick, droopy. The whole piece: slashes of orange, browns, streaks of odd shadows and greens.

Across the forehead: a wreath of white hash marks. His crown of thorns.

(Look at you. Look at you. Look at you. Look at you.)

Kanye West's "Runaway" rumbles through my earphones. I slouch into my white chair and stare at the painting. "And I always find, I always find something wrong. You've been putting up with my shit just way too long."

I'm a wretched human being with so much glorious evil pent up in my bones. This is why I've swallowed Kanye's latest creation with big bites. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — an unadulterated admission of his weaknesses. A deliberate "Fuck you. I know I'm human. You want to see how human?"

How human: Kanye pulls out his filthiest organs, smears them across his lips and spits the fire we hear heaving through the album.

When my angel mentor read the final draft of my poetry manuscript, she said, "It takes most male writers two or three books to hit this level of honesty."

"I orgasmed to knowing how to make him feel better," I said.

Several men have told me that if I ever married and bought into the wife-lifestyle, I would die. All of me would die. The spark, the dream, the duende. Did Sylvia marry Ted because she loved him? Or because she loved what she and Ted could become for the world?

The other evening, I tripped over an email I'd sent to an exboyfriend years ago. In it, I slur hells along the lines of "I almost married you. I almost gave up everything to stay on that one godawful coast forever and be a fucking wife for you."

(Look at you. Look at you. Look at you. Look at you.)

"Runaway" killed me at first listen because the "I could never take the intimacy and I know it did damage" sentiments kicked an old chord I'd forgotten about.

I've ripped up a handful of decent men. I'm not naturally a nice person. When we watched home videos over Christmas, my youngest sister almost cried because she saw and remembered what a bitch I was. I was 8. And already sinister.

Two Sundays ago, I went to church. The pastor rehashed the story of a blind man who cries out to Jesus, "Have mercy on me." He doesn't cry for justice. He wants mercy. The fruit of impossible compassion.

The pastor said we should desire this: to cry out for blessings — for that mercy — even when we deserve nothing. "Let God bless you in a way that offends others." Ha.. I'm certain my blessings have offended plenty.

A good man is writing at the table next to me. I don't deserve the way he caresses my feet. I don't deserve the way he cares about my father. I don't deserve the way he trusts me. The way he tucks me in because I have the mildest of coughs.

I don't speak to any of the men I've been involved with because they've all extricated evidence of me from their lives. But I know that as much as each one loathes me for his own reasons, every single one will tell you that I'm not as evil as I say I am. That I have "a heart of gold."

That I might just need a longer hug than most.

They used to say I had a messiah complex. That I was trying to save every man I dated. Funny. And mostly untrue. Saving isn't something I ever said I was good at. I just wanted to be crucified.

Or I wanted those men to save me. Maybe I spent all those years collecting little saviors because I believed that if I created a pile large enough, I could burn it as an offering to whomever could really do the saving.

I know you're coming in the night like a thief / but I've had some time, O Lord, to hone my lying technique. / I know you think that I'm someone you can trust, / but I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up. / So do you think that we could work out a sign / so I'll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try?

— Brand New. "Jesus." [song.] [lyrics.]

"The Consequences of Learning How to Fly."

2011-01-04T07:33:00.000-05:00

Maybe boycotting this thing is the wrong solution for someone like me. Someone bloated with emotion. Someone whose inner voices sprint from rib to rib to rib. Unfettered, unfiltered and so fucking loud.

Maybe I need a verbal garbage disposal instead.

Or maybe that thinking is also skewed. Maybe this space is neither a hole nor a dump where I can dispose of my excess words.

Maybe it's more like the collection plate at church.

And if this is the collection plate, then I should be the poor widow in the parable. The one who places her last two pennies in the offering pile because she understands the economy of the universe.

She understands that an empty purse is never truly empty. Not in the divine sense. She relinquishes what little she has. Because she knows that she's not sacrificing it or throwing it away. She's investing it. So she pulls out the linty insides of her pockets with a grin. Not only because she's grateful for what she has, but also because she's grateful for what's to come.

That heart is untouchable.

Everything else is human. Predictable. The rich religious people who tossed hefty checks into the plate get a nod. A "well, of course you did." But this woman — she deserves the story.

I believe in the divine economy of money. I believe in endless resources. In the glorious provision of birds. How abundantly they're fed. I believe in sparrows. The significance of every tiny, forgettable creature. The blood jolting through each one.

What I mean to say is this:

If I believe in the divine economy of money, shouldn't I also believe in the divine economy of words? An endless Source of creativity?

Shouldn't I have faith enough to deposit what little I have? And shouldn't I offer those meager words with gratitude instead of with the haughty attitude of someone who believes she has enough to spend and some to waste?

What good are my words if I hoard them and have thousands to spare? How dare I write less — or write the same amount as my 2010 self — because I'm afraid I'll have no words left for my "real" writing? Shouldn't I continue to offer my words here and seek the Universe to multiply my words so that I will have plenty to fill all those phantom books I mention so uninhibitedly?

Ha. What books.

It's funny. How nonexistent they are. Those books are partly figments of my delusions of grandeur. But those delusions are what fueled Rilke when he didn't write for 9 years. Nine fucking years and not a drop of ink.

But he pressed onward. Pushed every hindrance aside. Out of his way. Because he wasn't satisfied. He wanted to know Divinity more.

My honest, offensive opinion is this: Giving up is a moral failure worse than murder.

Note to my 2011 self: Don't quit. The Universe wants more than anything for you to claim your unique destiny and pursue your art, but there are malicious forces that couldn't bear such a powerful, redemptive story that pays homage to the Unknown and to the spiritual realm. So they're out to get you. They pick at you with your insecurities. They stab you with lies.

Don't waste your time by humoring them. Just keep going. Don't stop. Don't stop. Don't you fucking stop.

And by "you," I don't just mean me.

I mean you, too.

Because

2011-01-03T15:37:00.003-05:00

someone — a writer — once said to me,
"Stop writing in that damn thing.
Every time you write in it,
I know you're ignoring your 'real' writing,"

(which isn't all true,
but accurate enough to bother me),

in 2011, I resolve to disappear
to write.

In fact, every resolution I make this year —
a maximum of 15 minutes of social media per day,
at least 8 daily hours of writing (for work & for art),
sleeping regularly, et cetera —
will support one purpose:

to write.

I sometimes spew 318 words per post here,
but I've noticed that in more recent entries,
I wax poetic until I crash at 1454 words.

1000 words multiplied by 110 blog posts (in 2010)
equals 110,000 words —
much longer than the ideal length of a debut novel.
And I don't even blog that often.

You get the idea.

We had a good 44.5-month run here.
Goodbye, my lovers.
See you at the top.

And see you here.

Cue: festive funeral music.

______________

[edit: 1.4.11 @ 7:33am] — or maybe not. ;)

ju[ic]ebox: the calm before the storm before the calm.

2010-12-21T00:22:00.003-05:00

rome [phoenix]
we have a map of the piano [múm]
i'm okay [g-vo]
maintenance hall, 4 am [stars]
i want to be well [sufjan stevens]

i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be well i'm not fucking around i want to be

Merry Christmas. Finally.

2010-12-19T22:29:00.012-05:00

Eight years ago, I attended "Camp Creepy."

I drifted in late to the first session with caffeine in a styrofoam cup. Slid into the one empty seat. By the door. Next to an awkward, quiet Sri Lankan kid who borrowed my light blue gel pen all weekend. We were there because different strangers had invited us to rip apart the gospel of Mark. I was a freshman in college. And I agreed to everything.

There was a bible dictionary on the table. Plus a concordance to look up Greek words. He and I whispered snarky comments about the camp with a few of the other boys.

Secretly, we absorbed every word.

There was another girl — also Sri Lankan — whom I didn't speak to all weekend. She was as extroverted as I was. Maybe more bubbly. She told us — a room full of teenagers she'd just met — about the hell she'd endured with her family. I didn't know that this degree of honesty existed. But I was compelled.

So between sobs, I unraveled my story. The first time I confessed anything about my family. Up in the woods somewhere. What city was that? Somewhere in southern California.

Another girl spoke up. "Why does that kind of evil exist in the world?" She was livid. Frustrated. From across the room, I snapped at her. "It just does. People will always hurt other people. It's useless to question it. The real issue is what do we do with all of it?"

I had assumed she didn't understand what it was to grow up on your knees in a closet and wishing, as a little girl, that you could die. The next summer, I understood that I was wrong.

We all know degrees of pain. 'We,' as in.. all humans.

Your bartender slips you another scotch on the rocks. You don't realize that just before her shift, she was a wet wreck in the parking garage, screaming at a God she had ignored for months. Every time she zones out of conversation, she prays. Her life is torn up, she misses her father, and the night before, her pothead fuck buddy wasted hours convincing her not to harm herself. She flings you a smile. Adjusts her bra strap. You hand her another dollar.

When I played that role in the four-year movie called "Before 2010," those three kids from Camp Creepy stuck by me.

One found me on Christmas Eve in the middle of a deserted strip mall when I boycotted the holidays and ran from family. One scooped me up from countless gutters and fed me vegetables and mango pickle. One housed me in a refurbished convent and gifted me poems written by women who lived in forests.

They waded through my hells. Walked me through my parents' divorce. Talked me through my mom's new marriage. Pushed and pushed me toward a God who picked up my pieces and gave me a ticket to New York. They were the ones who prayed for New York.

One of them even had a dream. She said, "It's Sarah Lawrence. That's where you're going. That's what I'm praying for." She said this after my first rejection. I had four more rejections coming. Sarah Lawrence would be the last envelope I get. It would be the only school that takes me.

I fell to my knees at the mailbox. And wept. I didn't deserve to go to New York. Not for a second.

But it's not about deserving, right?

Almost exactly seven months ago, last May, I left my Brooklyn apartment in a tank top and skinny jeans. I was on my way to my second shift at a bar in Williamsburg. I had made up my mind to bartend fulltime. Stay in New York.

When I reached the subway turnstile for the G train, it was turned off. No out-of-order sign. There were people on the other side who had somehow gotten through. No one could tell me why it was suddenly turned off.

Annoyed, I walked out of the station and embarked on the 30-minute walk to the bar. And something hovered over me. I had a sinking feeling that I knew who turned off that subway turnstile.

So I texted the friend who borrowed my blue pen. Because I knew he'd say, "What if it's a sign? What if you're not supposed to bartend? Isn't that what you said? That you wouldn't bartend again?" He did.

He said, "So don't go then."

I said, "I have nothing. If I don't bartend, what the fuck happens next?"

"You find out whether God is real."

Just like that. As if it were that easy. I wanted to believe him. I had spent seven to eight years listening to his crazy talk about God, and I was tired of living in circles. I was tired of flirting to earn more money to spend on whiskey.

I stopped walking. I could see the bar from where I was standing. I had to cross the street beneath the Brooklyn/Queens Expressway to get to it. Then I called the Sri Lankan girlfriend who housed me in the convent. I told her all the awful things our other friend had said. About finding God and all that.

I told her because I wanted her to tell me that it was true. All of it. That God was real. That I could know this as deeply as they knew it. That it wasn't too late. That I didn't have to go. And she did. She said all those things. No hesitations.

I crouched on the stoop of a brownstone. Sobbed and sobbed into the phone. I said, "I need you to stay on the phone with me while I walk home." She stayed.

I walked up to my rooftop and wept. My third friend, the one who feeds me, was in my bedroom. She was visiting me from Boston. I thought she would lecture. Tell me to be more responsible. Not quit without a plan. She loved God, but she loved a practical one.

But when I wilted back into my room, she smiled. She told me that if I wanted to come home, I should come home. And by "home," she meant California. No. I think she meant a different "home."

So I packed my things. Left a month later.

Today, I went to a church's Christmas service. Okay, I'll tell the truth. I've gone to this church almost every Sunday since I've been back in California. I haven't attended church regularly since 2001. I haven't extensively "studied" any biblical texts since 2006. But something about this place lures me. It's quiet. Crammed with good spirits. Not pretentious, not judgmental. They don't give me "advice." They tell me, "Ask God for yourself." The people there don't care who I am or who I was. All they see is that God handcrafted me.

More importantly, they believe that nothing is impossible.

At today's Christmas service, one of those friends and I accompanied the other friend's musical performance. At one point, we belted out my favorite lyrics of his: "I'm standing right where I'm supposed to be. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay." Some people started clapping.

It took everything in me not to cry.

I looked straight at my other best friend, sitting in the pews with her husband. She smiled. She understood.

I don't know how many more times I will iterate this: How many nights I drank and drank because I wanted alcohol poisoning. How wretched everything was. How cold, that house in Pasadena. How fractured, that relationship. How I screamed "help" so loudly, the landlord showed up because the neighbors thought someone was being raped.

I think some people wonder whether I exaggerate these stories. They see me calm. Joyful. And they wonder whether any of it could be true.

Nothing is impossible. People do change — when they have the right catalyst. Sculptures don't change form alone. They might rust or melt, but they don't transform by themselves. But a sculptor can melt his creation and redesign it to be a more beautiful, wholly different beast.

Today, when I walked back to my car, its ceiling was leaking and my driver's seat was soaked. The front vent part of my car was knocked off. Another addition to what was already a severely rocky week.

But the difference now: these storms don't phase me.

Yes, I react. I'm emotionally bent. I always react. But now, my heart is unshakable. Why? Today, for the first time in a long time, I really truly believed that I was standing right where I was supposed to be.

And I'm okay.
I'm okay.
I'm okay.

"And in a burst of light that blinded every angel

2010-12-19T19:46:00.001-05:00

as if the sky had blown the heavens into stars
you felt the gravity of tempered grace
falling into empty space
with no one there to catch you in their arms.

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation?
You build up hope but failure's all you've known.
Remember all the sadness and frustration.
And let it go.
Let it go."

Iridescent. Linkin Park. (Fitting.)

___________

Humbled. Muted. Held.
Loved and jolted.
Pieced together.

I love Stephen Colbert

2010-12-18T04:55:00.001-05:00

because he calls out our country's bullshit.

Well-written, accurate & so tasty in my soul!

VIDEO: JESUS IS A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT

Watch all 255 seconds of it. My favorite slice: the Ben Franklin quote clarification. Especially "mouthfuls of French whore."

Anyone who can say that with class and humor while exposing our country's misrepresentation of Jesus' politics gets an A+ in my book.

Also love this Kierkegaard quote found in the video's comment section:

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

Read the Bible surgically. Read about Jesus, who was an unabashed hippie Jew who once barged into a temple, broke plates and kicked tables because it was using religious guilt to screw poor people out of their money. Read all the other stories while you're at it.

Literacy is sexy. So is Jesus.

"No," the alchemist answered.

2010-12-18T03:21:00.002-05:00

"What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the world tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream. That's the point at which most people give up. It's the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one 'dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.'"

from The Alchemist | by Paulo Coelho

______________________

A harsh kick in my face. Fists in my back. "How badly do you want this?" Shouts. Shouts. "How badly??" Blows by the hundreds. Dirty punches. Bruises, welling up like crowds feasting on my body. "How badly do you want this??"

The Universe took a thousand shots at me this week.

It tested how desperate I am for my calling as an artist. A poet. It threatened my finances. Raped 70% of what was inside my bank account. It threatened my family. Tried to choke me with my parents' four-year-old divorce papers. It threw up all over my work. My sense of time.

The universe pinched my deepest insecurities about my writing.

Whether I'm any good. And if so, whether I can handle what comes after "you make it." Whether my father will survive it. Whether I should stop writing so much confessional bullshit. Whether it's bullshit. Whether god hates the lies I tell about him. Whether they are lies. Whether I should stop spraying so much 'god' into my poems. Whether anything I write makes any sense to anyone. Whether I'm in debt for nothing. Whether I should go to law school. I researched law schools.

Yes, it got so bad, I researched law schools.

I wept through most of the week. And every time the weeping simmered, the Universe turned up my hell a notch and bam — back to a fierce boil.

But I'm alive. I'm so alive, I'm laughing. I'm sore all over, my eyeballs hate me, but I'm laughing.

Because this week, I finally understood. I don't have a choice. I no longer possess my calling. It possesses me.

All the great artists understood that they weren't put on earth to be human. They were vessels. They didn't live to enjoy life. They lived to be squeezed of all they could offer, and then they died.

They painted and sculpted and composed until they bled eighth notes and brush strokes.

They locked themselves in rooms. Screamed from the edges of cliffs. Cut off their ear. They wrote whole letters about one leaf. They wrote whole letters about the color yellow. They fasted. They wandered. They made fools of themselves.

Whether or not they had a relationship with their Creator, the great artists understood the untouchable spiritual element required to produce their art. They all doubted themselves. And they relied on sources beyond their humanness for inspiration, encouragement and fuel. Their talent was not their own. It was a gift. It could be stripped from them at any moment, and they knew it.

The further I entrench myself in this calling, the hungrier I am for my Creator. It's the damnedest thing. I fought god for years, but I admit now: I don't think I can survive what's coming without that relationship.

Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I have delusions of grandeur. Or maybe I'm tired of staleness. Tired of doing small possible tasks when I can explore the oldest line in the book: "Nothing is impossible with God."

I want my proof. I want to know that this is true.

The Universe tried to kill me this week. It tried to knock the dream out of me and tempt me to quit. It tried EVERY bloody tactic. And I learned this: I'd rather die trying to figure out whether nothing is impossible with God than give up. According to the Coelho quote, the palm trees are right around the corner.

I once told my better half, "I'd die for this."

"No. Don't die for it," he said. "Live for it."

Please allow me to introduce myself.

2010-12-15T19:18:00.014-05:00

I am twenty-six years old.

— beat —

Age. What a useless barometer for assessing a person. As though you could determine the fruit of a tree by chopping it in half and tallying its rings.

Let's begin again.

Today is the first anniversary of my grandfather's death. I haven't purchased a pack of cigarettes in over 365 days. Hello. My name is ___.

2010 was an incredible year.

I began it in one best friend's bedroom in Jinja, Uganda and will end it in the other best friend's bedroom in California.

I spent a healthy chunk of the year in New York. I snatched up a masters degree. Published a smattering of poems. I told everybody that I'm one of today's 50 best new poets because a bunch of strangers said so and someone gave me a small award. I made business cards. I performed my poetry on various stages. And I finished my first manuscript.

This year, I met the mister I love. I let my hair grow long. I threw a pizza party in a prison and I learned that God speaks disastrously loud sometimes.

Well, first, I learned that God speaks.

In 2010, my somewhat estranged father Googled me and tracked me all over the Internet. I reread The Wrinkle in Time and delivered a Maid of Honor speech at my best friend's wedding. I learned to ride a bicycle.

I kissed zero strangers this year. I bought two new bras and began popping multivitamins regularly. I gave into the smartphone craze and started a Twitter account. My father found that, too. I remember only one bad hangover.

The year? A success, to put it mildly. We marched into it by calling it "The Year of Birthing." And newness abounded. I am a shockingly different beast now than I was 365 days ago. Finally.

But my standards for life have risen a thousandfold. Love, laughs and accomplishments are all well and good, but now I'm geared for more. I want miracles. I want life changes that can't be explained away with human terminology.

I'm ready for 2011. We're calling this one The Year of Power.

Watch.

"I dare the storms to come and get me."

["Listen (Oceans)" — G-Vo]

Growing up, whenever I cried,

2010-12-15T19:12:00.001-05:00

my mother always tried to make me laugh. Then she'd say that if I cried and laughed at the same time, I'd grow a pink mustache on my ass. Except she didn't say "ass."

My mister cracks at least one joke every time I cry. I cry often. He jokes often. And I usually laugh. I've been wondering for months why this doesn't bother me.

I only made the connection five minutes ago.

"We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised

2010-12-13T20:08:00.002-05:00

as unsolvable problems." — Margaret Mead.

He paints this to my Facebook wall. Takes a step back. "Is it crooked?" He brandishes a grin that stretches 2,833 miles to reach me.

"It's perfect." Beat. "And true, I'm sure."

I flash him a glittery smile. I hope his snow won't shake it.

A beautiful, awful Thing arrests me. When I set out to work, she sings, "I'm afraid you don't have very many years left in you." A trap. My focus slips and I humor the decoy. Then as I dip into fruitless conversation with her, my day shreds itself. What was supposed to be a 24-hour addition to my story disintegrates into a shitty draft.

"How much longer must I remain human? Where is my next body? My next assignment?" She is the wrong Thing to ask. Her answers will ruin me, I know. But I ask anyway.

I must have been handed the wrong list at birth. That list of idiots to kiss, men to save. I'm more than certain I've squandered my youth holding all the wrong people. Gripping the ones I should have discarded.

When I was twelve and propped on my mother's toilet, I stared at one of her "poems" written by "Anonymous," scripted across a fading image of an uncertain man adorning a Roman torture device. After years of unsuccessful brainwashing, I found Jesus. In a bad poem.

In that moment — before I was old enough to sew dirty promises into the eyelids of dying men — I realized that the list didn't belong to me.

But I'd memorized all those names already.

I found the list today and was surprised to find that I'd crossed off every name. Except one. Attached to the list was a set of instructions I hadn't noticed before.

This is the way to strike through a name:

1. Understand that if he were to die, it wouldn't be your fault.
2. Grab a thin page of words from any leather-bound book you own and pierce it through the filthy lung of that beautiful, awful Thing.
3. Write this in your journal, on your mirror, on the bottoms of your blistered feet:

Your life is not an unsolvable problem.
It is a great opportunity.

Then, for the love of all that is good and holy,
live, damnit.

"Do you think it's serotonin syndrome?"

2010-12-12T21:49:00.008-05:00

my nurse roommate asks the human jammed in her cell phone. Their conversation dips into adverse drug reactions and ways to crash the central nervous system.

What is it like? To unzip and ogle the body until it's nothing but a box of flesh and spongy tubes.

I could never be a nurse.

Nurses patch up belly wounds the size of cats while retaining divine compassion for the human at hand. Nurses waste away in order to help others be more human. My roommate comes home spit on, pissed on and infected to oblivion. Right now, she's strep-throated, half-dead on the carpet. Fetal position. And for what? So that piles and piles of fractured, ruptured people can experience at least a smidgen of dignity before what — dying?

She sings to her deaf-mute, comatose patients.

Our bodies have quotas for survival. We require almost twenty cups of blood simply to be able to kiss.

But holy — the strange things we can do to our bodies to keep them spinning is wild. They can even shove a plastic stick wrapped in copper into your uterus. Just so you can have sex without a condom.

I spent the last 36 hours in a haze. I felt wretched. Dizzy. I schlepped around a blob for a body and injected it with chocolate chip banana bread.

Then I prayed with my strep-throated nurse roommate this afternoon. She whispered a bit, then typed "It hurts to whisper" on her laptop. I blabbed words along the lines of "I hate the transition. Where the truck is my 'destiny.'" I became very Ecclesiastes. In layman's terms, that means I became very hopeless. Then I prayed, "Sorry for being a dick."

(My haze was odd. It came from space. And I'm trying to determine whether this was me exuding me or me embodying the disillusionment of a man in Asia whom I've been praying for.)

I preempted my roommate's laptop and forced her to drown in vulgar comedy with me. Then she needed to call some other nurses to dissect what causes serotonin syndrome.

And I came here. To write about her. Instead of finishing the work that pays my bills.

Then — I swear — as I wrote, something clicked.
Like a pistol.
Tomorrow, I begin the novel.

Advice to my lady friends (& to my gay male friends), with love, from a Russian writer:

2010-12-12T05:26:00.001-05:00

"If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man."
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

__________

(One of my favorite things about him is how well he laughs with me. And I've never used that line.)

There is a hole in these sweatpants.

2010-12-11T17:28:00.000-05:00

And they're not even my sweatpants.

__________________

anxiety:
It hisses through the microphone implanted in my uterus.

love:
She used to carve watermelon bowls for every occasion.

work:
Less rocks, more bourbon. A real self-starter.

faith:
Yes, the mountains move. But how many of them are there?

doubt:
I stopped rubbing cocoa butter into that scar.

life:
Delete 99% of all messages received. Edit the remaining.

peace:
Dishwasher detergent, chapstick and a roll of quarters.

T wrote the first 9 chapters of Mr. B's memoir.

2010-12-10T00:04:00.017-05:00

My task: write the last three.

I scanned a couple chapters to garner what gave Mr. B — whose full name I can't decipher — the gall to attempt a memoir. What made his 95 earthly years compelling? What did he invent? Cure? Blow up?

From what I can tell, he's not famous. He doesn't sound repulsively wealthy, either. Compared to the Maserati-spitting financial advisors and entrepreneurs I normally write books for, Mr. B seems . . . boring.

His one claim to fame: he survived the depression. And a world war. Big deal. By the time I'm 95, I'll be able to say the same.

Mr. B was a carpenter of sorts. He crafted wagons. Bookcases. He built houses. Created a coveted line of high chairs. He met his wife — his only wife — in the 1930s. They danced. They adopted children and, from what I gather, birthed one or two as well. They were happy Lutherans.

The first few chapters of Mr. B's memoir are predictable: "Houses cost $2000." "We wore ties to public school." "Then I saw a plane in the sky for the first time." Nothing special. Nothing to differentiate him from millions of others who also trudged through the mid-1900s.

I stopped reading. Then I opened a document riddled with personal letters and notes written to Mr. B by loved ones who want to contribute to the memoir. They praise not only him, but also his wife. They make fun of him. They thank him. They share memories that date years before either one of my parents was born.

One note was written by his daughter's friend. She signed it with her pet name in quotation marks. She thanked him for the unique furniture pieces he'd designed and gifted to her over the years. She said, "You were like a dad to me." On her wedding day, Mr. B offered to walk her down the aisle.

That's when I lost it.

Suddenly, I was weeping in wild admiration of this stranger. A man of moderate renown. A business owner who was once a small-time, local politician. And from mounds of firsthand evidence, a man as genuine as they come. Brimming with divine, old-fashioned love. His bones, carved of gentleness. Selflessness. A carpenter who exudes the heart of the Carpenter he believes in.

Mr. B became father to dozens who had no fathers. He adopted some. Took in others. He invited his children's friends to his birthday parties. He begins his memoir: "When my daughter suggested that I write a book, I asked her, 'For what?'"

"'Your life, Dad!' she said."

I once believed that love trumps all. Before "dreams," came "love." I used to drop my life and pause everything to offer myself to others. I was a magnet for shattered people. In college, I would forgo studying for final exams to spend hours talking friends off the ledge. And I did it happily.

But four years ago, I sacrificed months of sanity to be a human crutch ~~for a man in a foreign country.~~

I lost ~~the meat of my innocence there.~~ A sore transition ~~from youth to death. Then I boarded a plane without my things. Returned to California, a zombie~~. ~~Four years ago — almost to the date.~~

~~I boycotted Christmas. Flew to Missouri to spend~~ New Year's with strangers who talked liberally about a God who had started flickering like a dying light.

~~I learned the hard way that it's~~ impossible for us humans to give ~~of ourselves in that I-would-die-for-you sort of way. Agape. The love that sacrifices.~~

Love — I determined — was a substance we could contain in limited quantities. We are bodies. Vessels. Capable of frightfully little. Only when we appeal to an infinite source of that love can we actually live our lives in service of others without burning out, killing ourselves or disappearing.

~~Love that comes from our humanness isn't love. It's a shadow.~~ A poor representation ~~of the real thing. Love that expects returns isn't love. Love that depletes isn't love. Love that boasts, needs, envies, hurts —~~

Love that begs and bleeds isn't love. It's human. And gorgeous. But it's not Love.

~~Love doesn't think. It doesn't ask. It acts. It gives and gives and gives. But it gives from an overflow. And it receives~~ that overflow from elsewhere ~~— somewhere too ethereal, too complex, too glorious to explain here.~~

~~I wrote a few days ago that "it's impossible to talk about how in love you are without sounding like a jackass." I realize that this applies especially when you're~~ talking about an inhuman Being whom most people dismiss.

~~But sometimes, it's nice to embrace this kind of all-consuming "delusion." I've come to prefer 'crazy jackass' to 'relatable cynic.' I treat others better this way.~~

~~Besides —~~ how ~~else~~ do you reach 95 with so much grace?

"her_life" Renovated . In Detail .

2010-12-07T05:50:00.004-05:00

Cold beets, saved in the fridge.
Oceans. Dreams. My Ocean Dream floral eau de toilette.
Displaced mail key.
An unwashed white v-neck shirt, size medium —
ziplocked & mailed.
White slingback flats. Pointed toes.
Discovery of iTunes playlist, titled, "xxx | beast music."
In it, one song. Shaped by a friend.
Cumulus clouds & a gray sunset sheeted in vague orange.
Glidecam counter weight disc.
Signed book, stolen.
The inscription: "Flowers that wilt with Saturn."
Two sets of scars hugging the knuckles on my left hand.
His cushion.
The space between stars #2 & #3 on my ankle —
inner right ankle. The one that didn't break.
White vinegar & roasted garlic.
His birth year; the last four digits of his phone number.
Five red candles, unlit in one room.
One red candle, lit in the other.
The mirror, shattered & propped up in his hallway.
5 years of diaries, buried.
14 years of journals (6 years of blogs), salvaged.
Missing: the one I kept while with my father in Korea.
On the cover of that journal (& my left forearm): a bird.

Evening thought: is it possible that you know nothing of my heavy love of fireflies? The last time I spotted one: summer, 2005, two hours south of Manila. But: you may be the only one who knows about my obsession with dreamcatchers from age nine. Maybe we broke the swing on the deck of cabana #13 so that we could transfer to the cabana filled with them.

I didn't break just any plate.

2010-12-07T00:51:00.009-05:00

I broke the one painted to mimic a clock. The one I'd painted for him — for what reason? An anniversary?

I hurled it against his wall.

He flinched. Then stifled reaction. The most sentimental man I've ever known, he collected bits of us and strung us around his room. He taped to his wall every postcard I sent him on my road trip away from him. But he smoked too much to remember to say so. Or he was playing his games.

I drove through Arizona. Kansas. Ohio. Posted him something from every stop. And no response. Not even an "I got it."

He exerted obscene efforts to pretend not to care about people — about me. He was obsessed with his appearance — appearing tough, appearing secure, appearing polished in his Diesel jeans and carefully folded dress shirt sleeves. Honesty took a back seat. He was a child, afraid of his emotions. Well, more accurately, afraid of nearly everything.

Isn't that the Los Angeles curse? To waste your life perfecting your 'image' until you neglect and lose all the people who ever understood and loved you — your heart, your will, the way you chew your mother's food. The only friends of his I liked were the ones he eventually abandoned.

Poetry could make him weep. Music was his life. He knew the lyrics of everything. He could sense duende a mile away and for what? I didn't know he'd invested his adolescence in visual art — drawing, painting — until his younger brother told me. When I asked him how he could abandon such a thing, he shrugged. In that moment, I subconsciously understood the thing that would be one of three major riffs in our relationship.

What I do isn't a hobby. It's a bloodline for which I will drop my life and move across the country.

To him, New York was 'away from him.' ("...road trip away from him...") He couldn't understand that New York was where I needed to excavate my dreams. He couldn't understand that word. "Dreams." When he finally mustered enough nerve to visit, I could hear "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" jittering in his temples.

— ("and I am finally seeing why I was the one worth leaving")

Months after we broke up, he'd sterilized himself with so many stocks, fakery and drugs that he couldn't listen to music that spoke anymore. He drowned himself either in electronic beats or an obnoxious breed of gangster rap. Nothing with heart.

I don't know what encouraged this entry. Maybe because I heard a song tonight that, once upon a time, he could've understood. Before he became a robot. Maybe because I feel guilty for having fallen in love with someone else since then.

Or maybe because the song took me to two places. To 2007 and to New York. Two opposite entities. One, the year of shattering. The other, the place of so much renewal. And tonight, it was easier to remember 2007 with fewer emotions than it was to think about New York.

After I broke that plate, I went to his apartment one more time. I found the shards puzzled together on his desk. I was so angry then that I laughed out loud and made him feel horrible. Actually, that might not be true. That might be what I imagine happened because I like to remember my past self as a vile creature.

In reality, I might have cried.

Like him, I've changed, too. I don't break plates anymore. Sometimes, I want to. But the difference is that I don't. But I think he's changed into a person who could break plates.

And shouldn't I feel guilty for that, too?

No regrets.

2010-12-05T07:43:00.010-05:00

A popular mantra to subscribe to is, "I have no regrets." But how productive is that? Does convincing myself that I regret nothing really contribute to my growth? My self-improvement?

After years of claiming that "I regret nothing," I'll be honest: I do have regrets. In fact, I've acquired a sweet handful.

Have I learned from my mistakes? Yes. Were they redeemed? Absolutely. But to say that I regret nothing because those mistakes paved ways for vital life lessons is cheap justification of my idiocy.

I can justify the most ridiculous things. My friends know that I'm the resident devil's advocate. An unabashed public defender of humans — particularly, fucked up humans. I justify bad decisions. Design elaborate arguments in favor of brash, immature behavior. I glory in our flawed nature.

Or I used to.

"It's amazing," one of my best friends said tonight. "You've evolved. You sound like a mature, stable adult." I took no offense. She meant well. I'm self-aware enough to know that I was once irreparably proud of my efforts to be a wholly deviant human.

Last night, R said, "I didn't believe a thing you said in 2007."

"That's because everything I said was a lie," I said without a beat.

S laughed madly and said, "Can we please pause this moment and replay what just happened? I love how well we know each other. And I love how much we've changed." I think she wanted to say "you" — "how much you've changed."

As insane as I may sound, I feel that much of my change was involuntary. I feel sculpted. Made. Smashed to formlessness, then reconstructed.

Everything I've learned — every 180-degree swing I've experienced in nearly every aspect of my life — I attribute to God.

God. I don't say that often here. Not like that.

Gushing about God in a public forum seems inauthentic dripping from my lips. I'm the loudmouth who questions — who strips God of his [her?] crown and scepter, shoves him into human body after human body, and crucifies him nightly. My favorite thing about the Christian God — the one I've seen emit power — is his unabashedly raw love. How hung up he is on his obsessive love of humans that he'd trade his majesty to dress in a man's body.

I digress.

My point is this: I have friends who've prayed for years for my 'transformation.' Friends I've hurt and dragged through spikes simply because they committed to loving me.

Exhibit A: one of my friends was once stuck by an anonymous unclean needle and suffered preventative HIV medication for months. And I wasn't there for her. I didn't even know that was happening because I had stopped speaking to her. Why? Because she had the nerve to be upset with me for cheating on a boyfriend.

I was a sadistic little bitch.

They say it's difficult to understand and believe in the concept of Jesus — and redemption — unless you've confronted your worst self.

The idea of someone loving you in your most distorted state in the same way he loves you when you're at your best is not compelling to the average, proud person. It seems unfair. Unjust. Stupid. The American way is to earn anything that fantastic.

But to someone who swims in regrets — to someone who understands her potential to destroy others — the idea of that kind of unconditional, inhuman love is...

...everything.

The only thing that could unravel all my filthy layers until it unearthed a presentable core. Rebirth. Resurrection. A second chance at all of it.

Every day that I think about the man I'm now committed to — the man sleeping at the other end of the webcam — I fall to my knees in gratitude. I don't deserve his love. I deserve God's love even less.

I buy into this God because nothing about this is about "deserving." It's about generosity, grace and mercy from the Other side. It feels incredible. To admit how ugly I am. And to imagine (or hear?) that voice from heaven saying, "Watch your mouth. It took me months to shape your lips just right."

Zero hesitation.

2010-12-03T03:56:00.005-05:00

We love to laugh. His humor runs on my wavelength and we're always cracking each other up. We even laugh for entire minutes about nothing. Then we laugh again when we remember how we laughed for entire minutes about nothing. I'll call him Smiley. He'll call me Giggles. It's disgusting, really.

A little over five months in, we've already fashioned enough memories to cram bookshelves. When people ask about our trip to Mexico, he grins, points at me and says, "She has a few stories she loves to tell." The ones I love feature someone getting smacked by a tree branch or someone standing on a Mayan sacrificial altar or someone breaking the swing on the deck of a cabana. That last one, we caught on videotape.

But no relationship between two flawed, fiery humans can be perfect. We've taken to saying, "I now love you as a whole person." Whole persons with fissures and bad habits. Tempers and fears. Daddy issues, ex issues. Lucky for us, God glues our pieces well. God, plus our dreams. And our eagerness to understand the other, appeal to logic and compromise.

I am an incurably emotional creature. But I've been thrown in and out of the ringer enough times to be viciously self-aware and know how to tame my fire.

So yesterday, when I lost two hours on the plane typing up a frenzy of over analyzed worries and questions and untruths about "us," my fingers threw a coup. They unleashed everything "true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy." List after list of how we are 'it.' I fell asleep in my aisle seat thanking God instead.

Six weeks ago, I stayed up until 4:30AM dying paper lanterns with the mister. The next day, we pulled an all-nighter prepping for and cruising through a glorious wedding for his friends. I can sleep for 6 hours in three days, help him serve his friends whom I've just met, and have an incredible time.

A few nights ago, he pulled an all-nighter slaving over a work project, and worked into the next day. That following evening, on no sleep, he drove us to Yonkers at 9PM to attend my friend's reading series, then drove us into Manhattan for bacon-wrapped hot dogs at 1AM before heading home.

I found a man who can forgo sleep for an entire night, but still want to go out — even outside the city — to meet up with people he barely knows. With zero hesitation. And a smile on his face.

Cut of the same cloth.

I could ruin you with a thousand more stitches of proof of that 'same cloth,' but I read somewhere that "it's impossible to talk about how in love you are without sounding like a jackass."

When my flight landed last night, I turned my phone on to a slew of texts from my ex-boyfriend. Two years after officially ending that saga and almost a year after our last real conversation, I told him today, "It's not enough to try to know someone or have inside jokes with them. You have to be cut of the same cloth. Really be made for each other."

Even years of 'history' fall short of 'destiny.'

"Who has never killed an hour?

2010-11-29T04:57:00.002-05:00

Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share."

— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

___________________

A wretched creature took my body hostage and hauled me through the last 14 hours without my knowledge.

Fourteen hours. It hurts to say those words.

Sigh. Displacing blame is easier than admitting that I am queen of stuffing myself with distractions. In fact, I stuffed myself so well, I literally vomited. Distraction is orange and tastes like dates and salty pizza.

Then I sipped more liquid Ritalin, painted my nails and continued not to work.

I could really use a space-time invisibility cloak right now.

"I'm expecting something terrible," she said.

2010-11-29T01:20:00.019-05:00

~~"Because so much good has happened."~~

"Don't say that!" shot out of me — a reflex. Then I stopped the lecture brimming from my lips. I said, instead, "I know. I think that way, too. All the time." Pause. "But words are powerful. So try not to."

The more surprising the good news, the harsher the bad. That's what life teaches girls like us to expect. Good news means a horrible accident will maim someone I care deeply about. Or someone will die.

~~354 days ago, my first poem was taken for publication. Timely, considering only a few days earlier, a horrible accident had maimed someone I cared deeply about.~~

~~But that afternoon, another journal asked to publish another poem. Two in one day? Gravy. A few hours later, Aunt M called. Right on cue.~~

~~Grandpa was dying.~~

So a few days ago ~~— two days before the anniversary of my friend's accident — when~~ my dad emailed me his first "real" good news in years~~, I entered a heinous little cave. And waited.~~

~~That evening, when I heard North Korea was chucking shells at the country my dad lives in, I felt a tad better. Sick, I know.~~

I know words are powerful. I've spoken enough things into being to understand that it is possible to birth entire universes by voice. So I don't announce these fears — rather, expectations — out loud anymore.

~~What I haven't figured out is this:~~

~~How do I navigate my irrational need for "karmic" balance while in a relationship with an emotionally stable, sane human?~~

A textbook introvert, he never asks me anything except for an occasional "What are you thinking?" He's either entirely not curious about me or the information I volunteer suffices. Probably neither. My educated guess is that he doesn't like to "impose" his questions on me. So his curiosity dissipates as quickly as it emerges.

~~Sometimes, if he thinks to, he'll ask "What about you?" in response to one of my thousand questions about him. And he'll ask about my nightmares.~~

I don't volunteer the mental hells I create and annihilate. Not because I don't want to, but because if I suck us into that world, there's a danger of us never escaping. Besides — I know what he'll say if I do: "Save that for your writing." Then a kiss on the cheek to make it go away.

~~(I'm dulling an undeniably sweet gesture I would have sold organs for once upon a time.)~~

~~My action plan so far: I internalize my hell until it cakes to a horrible solid. Then I wreck the mass to bits with prayers of violent chainsaw teeth. Or attempt to. Yes. I attempt the shit out of it.~~

~~Most of the time, the prayers work. But I can't sleep without my fierce nightmares anymore. And what's strange: he's in almost every single one.~~

A few days ago, my dad emailed me his first "real" good news in years.

When I told you, I didn't sound as elated about it as I actually was because of what I wrote above. Really, internally, I don't know what to do with what he told me.

I don't expect you to understand my story well enough to realize how viciously important this news is to me.

How I've prayed for this for seven awful years.

How I passed it off as "an email from my dad" that I tried to explain while walking from one subway car to another because I was too afraid to express the thousand emotions sloshing through me only to be met with quiet, mediocre understanding when really, the one appropriate response from you would've been a fierce halt. A dramatic stoppage of time. Hoards of angry New York commuters maneuvering around the wild jig you should've jigged in celebration of this.

Sounds they don't know.

2010-11-21T11:29:00.001-05:00

Everything I write leaves an inauthentic film on my tongue.

I revise with a pole axe in hand. Last night, I decimated 1437 words to 142. Everything I write (these days?) is too (fucking) clean. So I added a parenthetical "(I miss you)" in the middle of a field of corkscrews and steel plates. 145.

I don't care whether "they" can see, hear, taste, feel and smell the people — the flesh — I expose through alphabets. I want them paralyzed.

I want you paralyzed.

I want you to forget to breathe. To watch that seen/heard/tasted/felt/smelled flesh fall off its muscles and bones and weep a mess at your feet. And in that moment, I want you to hear your mother. Her shivering.

I want you to die.

Then, for the bloody love of God, resurrect. Consider why you have breath. Why you are human, yet would sell whole bones to be machine.

I knew a man, once, who sold his heart for some mushrooms and stocks. He chased a woman who broke his plates and his dignity. He chased her because she made him feel. "You aren't afraid to experience every available human emotion."

But when a man sells his heart, his arteries harden to plastic. His veins — cold tubes. This man's hinges creaked every time he touched the woman. He forgot how to lure her with his music. So he stuffed her ears with dollar bills.

After the woman pole-axed her way out of his metal sheets, she roamed the country for a man who didn't smell of that same factory that churns out such men. Suit-and-tie men. One hand clutching the woman, the other fingering the blackberry. Men who prefer the safety of that tangible green inked paper to... the dangerous Spirit. She was tired of men who say, "That's not practical," when she says, "But maybe if you want it badly enough, it will simply appear."

It does appear, she said out loud as she closed his door.

There's something unnerving — she said to the quiet birds — something unsatisfying and tiresome about a man who simply wants what you have. A man who wants to pray. Who wants to know your Creator.

Wanting isn't enough.

She desired a man who could say, "Your Creator and I shared multiple, gorgeous conversations about you before you got here." A man who prays more often than he speaks.

That was the fantasy.

It was never "I need a man who can treat me better."

The message arrived

2010-11-15T23:09:00.006-05:00

when I held a hammer in my hand and forty-seven nails lay on the carpet.

Earlier this afternoon, I grew inexplicably tired. My body slouched, the apartment blurred and I couldn't pry open my eyes. S said, "Maybe you're supposed to dream something. Take a nap."

In the nightmare, I saw you for the first time in weeks [since the last irrelevant, you-infused nightmare]. I'd extricated you from my subconscious, yet I was so angry, bitter and evil in that detailed alternate universe. Everything, familiar. I wouldn't get into your car. You wouldn't leave my kitchen.

I woke up confused. Strange, I said out loud. I thought you had left. I let myself replay the dream for half a minute, but I didn't dwell. I closed my eyes and imagined a good hand dig through my skull, scoop out the meat of my brain and chuck it into the sky.

The sky always catches.

Then I sprouted a new brain.

( — I pray in pictures. )

So your "I'm checking to see whether you blocked my number" text message with a photo of the lyrics to that tragic little song? It didn't jar me.

Instead, my mouth dropped open and I congratulated the solid, clairvoyant defense work of my subconscious [and the God who steered it today]: "Thanks for preparing me for this."

Then I deleted the text and hammered in the rest of the forty-seven nails.

ju[ic]ebox: amber lights. six billion armed children. a wall.

2010-11-10T15:21:00.001-05:00

piano fire [sparklehorse]
listen (oceans) [g-vo]
bullet and a target [citizen cope]
just like heaven [the cure]
the well and the lighthouse [the arcade fire]

No. I don't want just any light.

2010-11-01T21:48:00.002-04:00

"What can I do with my obsession with the things I cannot see? Is it madness in my being? Is it the wind that moves the trees?"

* * *

Last night, before S left for her hospital night shift, the voices in my head grew so violent that they shoved me into the carpet. I stayed down. Let the rough gray tufts etch into my cheek.

"Which came first?" I asked.

"Did our mothers fuck up first? Or did the idea for our existence come first? Did our mothers' mistakes cause God to react by ushering us in as band-aids? Or did he know all along that we would exist? Did God intend for them to fuck up?"

"I don't know, hon. I don't know," she said.

"Because I don't want to birth a beast," I said. "I don't. I don't want to be the thing through whose uterus God will create a monster of a human who will shift cultures and nations. I want to be that monster. I want to be it."

I didn't fully know what I was saying.

These thoughts—the voices in my head—were shapeless. Loud, but blurry. Like a thousand talking thumbs instead of faces. Their words, the noise of animals. Not angels.

Then I drove downtown to soak up some power from one of my favorite authors. I watched Mark Z. Danielewski brandish his conductor's wand to unleash a symphony of words. I met someone who had purchased a copy of Danielewski's featured novella in Dutch—because it was buy the Dutch version or not own it at all.

On the drive home, I tried to explain what I'd witnessed over the phone. What the person on the other line didn't know was that tears were sweeping down my face the entire time. Duende.

I know what I want. I know what I'm destined for.

It's not the same as "everybody else."

One of my lifelines—one of my blood friends—emailed me today. In 1543 words, he vocalized and clarified everything I'd been desperate to hear yesterday.

The email began with an apology and ended with a disclaimer. And the meat of it? Hundreds and hundreds of words you don't say to someone unless you know you're blood-bound and you care more about making sure that your friend reaches her destiny and care less about losing her as a friend.

The common thread in the few—2? 3?—people I consider "blood friends" is they pray incessantly. And because they pray incessantly, their timing is always—always always always—impeccable.

I said, "Thanks." And also, "I knew I could count on you."

Those voices I heard yesterday—they saw his words coming. They were whispering them to me over and over all night.

Then this afternoon, I asked my other blood friend to pray with me. Something about praying with another person triggers a deep-seated magic that's difficult to explain. Praying with someone else ends me, recreates me and swings me into the future in such harsh, gorgeous ways.

Especially when I pray with this friend.

As she prayed, she prayed so much of what was in that email—what I'd heard in blurs. Much of what she prayed were those words verbatim.

It's nice to be reminded that sometimes, the Spirit is real. And that Spirit is the same—everywhere.

* * *

As I drove down 2nd Street in Los Angeles today, I entered a tunnel.

The tunnel kicked a thought into me:

I can push and push through my tunnel until I reach that light at the end. But I can also choose to stay inside the tunnel. Settle for the lights I've put up inside.

It's even easier to settle for the lights inside the tunnel when these lights still look much better than the lights at the END of someone ELSE's tunnel. Some people dream so small that they simply want what I have now. It becomes tempting, then, to settle for what I have now.

But I don't want just anybody's tunnel. I don't want arbitrary, dim light. I want to taste the glory waiting at the end of mine.

"I'll go anywhere," I prayed.

"I'll go anywhere and I'll do anything. I just want to know that it's divine. I want my life to be so supernatural that the world wants to shove me in an insane asylum. Just show me what it is. Give me a map.

"Then please—for the love of all that is true and true and true, show me how to keep from fucking this up."

"Let the Drummer Kick." Citizen Cope. Repeat.

2010-10-29T02:40:00.005-04:00

The song swims above our conversation at French Roast. The server has cleared our crème brûlée.

Our.

Our conversation. Our crème brûlée.

* * *

Four months prior—to the day—I asked him to run away with me. "Let's go to Fiji and elope." We had exchanged phone numbers a handful of days before that. Both of us, freshly unhinged from other halves. Unassuming.

My room was choked with boxes marked, "3,000 miles from here." I didn't even know his middle name. And he said yes.

I imagined I would fly home to the good ocean and write pages to secure that stranger in my memory. I imagined months—maybe years—alone. Joyful, but alone. I imagined I would write myself into a fury until one day—the sun the color of emergency flares, the world somehow spilling with rain—I would rush back to New York and scour the city for his one dimple. His easy laugh.

But before I could, he was sitting to my right, stuffing injera and lentils into my mouth with his bare fingers in front of my closest friends. He was meeting my mother. Using my towels.

* * *

"What song is this?" he asks. I hear the beat. Four notes kick back and forth from a piano.

We're almost ready to leave the café in the same U-Haul van that held our first [our only] argument. And our first recovery. Our good, easy recovery.

His right hand reaches across the table for my left. Those fingers feel familiar enough now that I can't remember ever having held any others.

* * *

In only four months, he's explored a few of my deepest tunnels. I like to think I've explored a few of his.

We've already developed a rhythm. We know the words the other uses in prayer. We've seen the other sigh. Sleep. Fret.

Every man I've dated has melted my "everything is possible"s into "most things are possible." Men have always sifted the supernatural out of me. They've pulled me closer to dirt—to this side of the clouds.

But this new human—my other half—isn't satisfied here either. He dreams as large as I do—if not larger. He hates the word "impossible" as much as I do—if not more. And he wants to move from place to place to place the way I've needed to since birth.

How did I find him??

* * *

Months before our first real conversation, we stood in the same room for the first time. He was filming. I was reciting poetry. Of course.

He remembers I was wearing a hat.

I'm seventy humans twisted into one.

2010-10-03T06:50:00.005-04:00

Several of them are dead. I labor daily to keep the corpses from infecting the others.

Today, I received a shoebox of notes handwritten by a highlighter the exact shade of yesterday's sunset. One said: "You are not a graveyard." Another: "Only I separate the dead from the living. Give me your shovel."

And my favorite: "I know all of your names."

I drove for three hours into the sunset yesterday. My passenger slept, so I shut off the radio. I spent my first hour singing. The second hour, praying. The third, crying a little, inserting little pleas into both the singing and praying. In that third hour, my thoughts hit a patch of Universe. I felt a surge in my bloodstream.

The rain softened and rushed in sync with my pulse. It chased me up, followed me down.

At arbitrary intervals, my thoughts drifted away from my subconscious with force and all I could direct my mind toward was rain. Sometimes splotchy. Sometimes so sleek and timid, I didn't need my wipers. I looked everywhere for rainbows.

When my passenger woke, the sun seemed to slice through the windshield. We sat in silence. Then he repeated: "Red light. Red light. Hit the brakes." I couldn't hear his voice at first. I was trying too hard to hear the sun.

I didn't see the car stop in front of me. But I braked in time. Avoided an accident. A 2193-page book lunged from the backseat and slid beneath the passenger seat. Its navy leather cover stayed folded awkwardly until I retrieved it this morning.

In that moment, a sheet of anxiety began to wrap itself around me. I felt all the live humans within me go numb. The dancers quit dancing. The ones fierce for my destiny suddenly went limp.

Then I felt the dead begin to speak.

I heard lies and insecurities and the worst parts of my past selves stirring back to existence. My countenance deadened. My brain inverted itself, and for the rest of the evening, I couldn't shake this thought: "I'd give anything for a cave to run away to."

I found it strange that it had been months since I last fantasized about running away.

I couldn't drive. Every small jerk of the car seemed infinitely more dangerous and uncontrollable. I exited the freeway.

Then we saw a rainbow. I cried.

At the gas station, my passenger voluntarily cleaned my windows. He took over the wheel.

All night, I couldn't identify the death-voices as being death-voices. The anxiety clung to me like a fresh layer of skin. I couldn't detach it from myself, so I claimed it as my own. I called it American names. "PMS," "sleep-deprivation," et cetera.

Today, I spent most of my day watching the Universe unwrap me. The voices cleared. The dead shuffled out of me.

I realized that the 'dead' are not even 'former' versions of me. They were never me. The 'dead' were excess personalities I spent the earlier part of my twenties sloughing off. I was never 'Bianca,' my evil alter-ego. She was a separate spirit trying to steer me down destructive roads.

I sound crazy. But I swear that this makes sense in some unhinged part of my brain.

I prayed quite a bit today. Received a phone call from someone who prayed for me from a different city. I read a lot. Digested mostly poetry. Some written by Prophet Isaiah. Some by Allen Ginsberg. A few others. I revived all of my living personalities. Untwisted them and stacked them next to each other within me. The dancers danced again.

I thought about the near-accident. I thought about angels.

"Pay attention," said another note in the shoebox. "You don't need to lose yourself to try to hear the sun. When it speaks, you will know."

"Your ears will never cease ringing."

"You are not your mother."

2010-10-02T22:38:00.003-04:00

I change my mind.

I said I want my engagement ring stone (if I decide to marry) to be a sapphire—my mom's birthstone.

But I change my mind. I am not my mother.

I treasure every overworked nerve and knuckle in her body. She helped me acquire the taste of prayers rumbling in my mouth. She never pressured me to be anybody, but fed the dreamer in me. She fought seven thousand battles for our family every day. And I love her.

But I don't want to be her.

I refuse to dream the dreams of giants, then enter my forties with three children to discover I've harvested only a fraction of those dreams.

Hats off and respect to the people who dream of family. Of one solid home. But I don't want it. A husband and children and house were never my end goal. Not even my side goal. They are all by-products of my dreams. My art. My calling. If they happen, they will happen organically. Not because I asked for them. And only if they propel that art and calling.

My mom said this once, too. No—not once. Over and over again, she dreamed this. Her younger self wanted a whole other life more than she wanted me.

She used to sit by my bedside and pray for me to grow up faster.

The romantics say, "When you find 'the one,' you'll change your mind. You'll make compromises. You'll want to settle down."

No. Not a chance. Those rules don't apply to me.

I crave nations. I want to soar from one corner of earth to the other. Maybe climb a moon. Host galas for strangers. Teach them to dream. I want to embrace art in all its forms in a hundred wild languages. I want a dangerous existence. I don't want the stability of a good school system for my kids. I want to build in my children a love of cultures and of angels.

I want to know that finding love and locking in your destiny are not mutually exclusive. I want to know this is true: the 'right' person will only fuel you. Never change you. That person will only push you to become a more impassioned version of yourself. My 'right person' will also want nations.

Tell me it's possible.

And if it isn't possible, I will sacrifice the ring, the man and everything they represent. I will find love beyond the bedroom. In mud and poetry. I will knot my tubes and chase the biography that won't end with "she is survived by her husband and two children."

...but tell me it's possible. And if it is—and if you please—proof. A sign.

"Safety pins holding up the things that make you mine."

2010-09-26T07:17:00.005-04:00

["Shine On." — The Kooks]

* Madeleine L'Engle said, "Poets are born knowing the language of angels."

* R. said, "It's better to have experienced your 'sordid' past and love God now with a fierce passion than to have lived a life according to the 'rules', but only know God without loving him. These people walk around with clean slates, but they never shed a tear."

* On September 24, 2007, I wrote, "I work all day and then I cry on the drive home, then put on a happy face, then I cry all night to sleep. Sometimes, I park somewhere on the street and sleep because I can't face being alive."

* On September 13, 2009, Michael Koh said, "What you offer to them is something that the world can already offer! And what we've done is we've allowed Jesus to become this 'helper.' Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who never DOES anything. He never actually breaks into people's lives so then we never see a miracle. We never see that qualitative difference."

* Paulo Coelho said, "Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."

* A friend said, "I can't imagine myself being tied to just one person for the rest of my life."

* I thought, but didn't say, "I never could imagine that either. But when you know, you know. When it's real, no other human exists anymore. I, in and of my flesh, could never say these words. But I suddenly—miraculously?—understand this with a strength that had to have come from beyond myself."

* On June 27, 2010, at a layover in Georgia, I typed myself a note: "Don't fuck this up. You don't get a second chance at this one."

* I told him everything. He didn't flinch. Later, as he swirled into sleep, he said, "Tell me all your secrets."

* On every hellish drive to work at that bar, I saw this quote painted across a building on Normandie Avenue: "We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another."

* I have evidence that eight Septembers ago, when I was 18, I began blog entries with the words, "God is good! Amen?"

ju[ic]ebox: keep keys in your bra while taking out the trash—don't toss them. < / metaphor >

2010-09-22T22:13:00.002-04:00

go do [jónsi]
the catalyst [linkin park]
revelation song [kari jobe]
first breath after coma [explosions in the sky]
apocalypse please [muse]

My phone won't stop ringing.

2010-09-22T02:22:00.003-04:00

As though it were possessed by the itchy spirit of a past I thought I'd abandoned in a gray forest somewhere. Hardships come in forties. Like forty ounces of a cheap King Cobra. Or forty years kicking circles in the sand.

Forty missed calls from seven thousand people.

I'm too young for wrinkles.

This apartment feels far emptier than it was only twenty-four hours ago. Hollower and more useless. We have too many kinds of cheese, and we always seem to have cake. Fuck cake.

Sometimes, a shelter is a shelter. Then you peel its walls and fancy plates to find that it is a cave. So you sit in the cave. Pet its walls. Call it, "Nice shelter. Here, nice shelter." Then the air clears so you see the steel bars. The padlock. But as uncomfortable as you feel in that cave-turned-prison, you can't let go of that first identity: shelter. "It's a shelter, goddamnit," you say.

I can make myself believe anything. Probably, so can you.

"The next time you think of it," she said, "Just laugh. Ignore it. Tell yourself you've already moved on from this. You're good at that. You're hyper-cerebral. You can make yourself believe anything."

I want just one year. One year away from everything and everyone.

I want one year in a country whose language I won't bother learning. I'll scour the streets like a small animal with no mouth. I'll hear everything. Understand nothing. Recite to myself the scriptures and quotes I've collected over the years. Pen everything negative I've ever known onto coupon books and advertisements for local hookers until I've scrawled it all out of me.

Then after those clean months of solitary confinement and self-inflicted exorcism, I'll come home again. Open my mouth again. Answer my phone.

And my God — imagine the songs I will know to sing.

"I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone."

2010-09-18T22:50:00.007-04:00

- Rainer Maria Rilke.

I love incubating with words on a Saturday night above every other night. It sparks a mischievousness within me. Power.

I used to believe I led an exciting life. But capping each predictably 'exciting' Saturday night—or Tuesday or Wednesday night—with my head flopping above a toilet stopped being fun.

I was one step closer to liver failure and the same distance away from my dreams.

One of my girlfriends used to pride herself in sleeping with a new man every weekend. Her stories were fantastic. And if those men brought her joy and fueled her desire to live, I was happy for her. Eventually, every one night stand cut into her self worth. Her stories evolved into "I didn't want to, but I did."

God—how many times did I not want to, but did... simply because I thought that was who I was?

We should never worry about others putting us into boxes. We should be hyper aware, instead, of the way WE limit ourselves.

We set false boundaries around our self-inflicted identities. We say, "I'm the person who can x." So we x and x and x until we vomit x all over our lives and begin to wonder, "Why do I even enjoy x in the first place?"

The lie gripping us is this: "People don't change."

No! Fuck that! People do change. I changed. My mother changed. I can name countless people I know who have changed and have changed dramatically—so much that they are unrecognizable.

You can be whomever you want—really want. The version of yourself that will shock even you.

That same girlfriend has now been one half of a stable, beautiful relationship for several months now. She found a man who takes great care of her, and she loves being able to tell someone that she loves him. She scrapped her old identity and embraced one that actually fuels her calling and increases her passion for life.

I've had less to drink during my twelve weeks in California than I used to have during lunch. A strange feeling. The bottles of wine in our fridge are the same bottles of wine we bought in July. But this time, I haven't "quit drinking."

Every time I tried to quit drinking, I failed.

Eventually, I realized that focusing on the alcohol was counter-productive. So I began to say, No. I said, I didn't have a drinking problem. I had simply misinterpreted my identity. I had forgotten that I was handcrafted and beautiful.

The object of our focus has to be something beyond ourselves. Something unshakable. Something that will never fail.

If I stare too hard at myself, all I will see are flaws and inability. Self-focus will only paralyze me and tell me I can't make it. I can't walk on water.

You've heard the story about Jesus walking on water. But Jesus walking on water isn't the important part.

What they don't tell us is this:

Jesus had a buddy named Peter. And Peter, when he saw Jesus walking on water, immediately started walking on water toward Jesus! Peter walked on water because he had his eyes fixed on what Jesus was doing—fixed on the possibility of walking on water—and on Jesus, who encouraged this crazy behavior and said, "Sure, if you want to walk on water toward me, come."

In the story, Peter begins to sink. But it isn't a storm that knocks Peter over. And no, Peter doesn't sink because he's human. Peter doesn't sink because he isn't "Jesus."

The moment Peter begins to sink is this: Peter takes his eyes off the possibility—off of Jesus' ability. It's the moment he senses the wind and begins to remember his weaknesses. It's the moment he begins to fear what he was already doing.

The point of that Jesus story isn't that Jesus can walk on water.

It's that you can.

Dear self: stay focused. Stay fierce.

2010-09-17T08:51:00.007-04:00

Let your hands do the filthy work that pays the bills. But keep your eyes pinned to that good, good fire.

Watch nothing but the flames of your dreams. Hear nothing but the voice of the One who sparked that fire.

When you see a bush in flames, don't waste time. Don't pause to wonder how its leaves don't burn. Don't blubber in awe at the impossible events that unfold around you. Expect them. Expect the impossible. Watch the leaves blaze, and watch them stay whole, stay green.

Say out loud: "Of course."

When the leaves' rustling evolves into a shouting, say again, "Of course." Listen to that loving shout.

Hear that burning bush tell you to unhook your abilities from your destiny. Your destiny cannot be grabbed or realized through your own ability. And it matters even less that you're naturally a fuck-up. Moses was a murderer. And a runaway. Perhaps you believe you've fucked up in worse ways. Perhaps there's no such thing as "worse." Don't we all look the same to the Giver of Dreams?

Yes, we all look small.

So dream then. No. Grab.

We're not talking about your "dream" anymore. We're not talking number of houses, quality of spouse, passion projects, ducks in a row type stuff.

We're talking destiny.

The I'm-gonna-kick-this-planet-off-its-axis-just-by-laughing-and-wearing-a-pillowcase-cape stuff you believed before someone lied to you—yes, lied to you—and said, "Actually, you have to go to this school and get this grade and do steps 1, 2, and 3 before you can accomplish a, b, and c."

Before the lie, before your cruel childhood even took off, you were fearless. Curious. You jumped off tables. Crawled into cupboards. You pushed lids off of things without asking. You opened every door. You never stopped to ask, "Is this the right door?" It was simply a door. And behind it, possibility.

Stay focused. Stay fierce. Let 'possibility,' which comes from beyond your own abilities, overtake you. Decrease in size so that the God of miracles can increase. Yeah, I said it.

I won't settle for anything less than the power behind Bach or Rilke.

I'm done praying small prayers I can answer on my own. I want to pray prayers that require a God to answer.

___________________________

Dear everyone else: stay focused. Stay fierce.

Do you see that this is your story as well?

The moment she spoke, the lighting shifted.

2010-09-12T04:41:00.008-04:00

The cameras of my life swiveled toward her and zoomed in. She wasn't an extra. She wasn't a coincidence. She was planted into my life. And I was planted into hers.

We met in matching black tank tops a year ago. Served liquor to sleazy men because that was the only open door at the time.

Some girls serve liquor because they can smile and blow kisses. Because it's easy money. Effortless work.

Other girls—girls like she and I—do it because they're marching toward dreams that require maiming demons first.

That bar was a twisted rite of passage. Not all bars are. But this one was specially designed to break you. To pluck you from your destiny and suck you into a bright little hell riddled with cheap tequila and awkward, happy music.

It didn't even have windows.

Once, a ceiling vent crashed right in front of me. One more step and I would've been bludgeoned unconscious.

If you were bred since birth to recognize and lacerate evil, this bar taught you that you can only recognize and lacerate so much.

It taught you that you are human. Weak. Then, if you were lucky, this understanding made you angry. Angry enough to scribble a little note, shed your tank top, slough off your weakened skins,

and if you were like her—or me—you quit.

"I recognized you as soon as I met you," I told her over lunch on Friday. "You were someone I knew I was supposed to know. And this was before I knew your story."

She counted the scallops to make sure we shared the salad equally. The mark of someone who knows what it is to have nothing, and also what it is to have everything.

She agreed that we were meant to know each other. I believed her. She said, "I always knew you understood. But that's weird. Because you didn't escape a cult." She had escaped a cult.

So on that overdue lunch date, I finally told her my story. She asked many questions and looked visibly upset that I hadn't given her even small pieces of that story before.

I didn't know how, I said. I didn't want to undermine her powerful history. I didn't want to be the stranger who said, "I understand what you must have experienced because I went through something entirely different, and, in many ways, smaller, much smaller, but similar."

In more or less words, she said, "I'm happy you lived the life you lived" without saying "I'm happy you lived the life you lived." I understood. It's comforting to meet another young woman whose eyes contain decades.

"That's what I recognized in you," I said. "You were also a kid who was never a kid."

"We were always adults," she agreed. "We stopped being kids when we were in diapers. The rest of the world is filled with people who remain kids until they're 18 or 19."

"Or older. Some people we know are still children."

There's also another layer of "familiarity" with her. Like me, she has also always known this:

one person can change the world.

"People think that saying one person can change the world is cliché because it's not done often enough," she said.

"YES," I said. "Why doesn't everyone else know that they can also change the world?!"

I've begun to accumulate more and more people like her. People who've survived a thousand hells, yet have developed a resistance to pessimism. Dreamers who know better than the realists that the world is forty layers of fucked up, yet continue to dream and dream and bleed their dreaming.

I met another one recently. On Thursday, in downtown Los Angeles, he asked me if I'd like to roll down a hill. He rolled down to the bottom. I only made it half way. I got up and thought, how blessed we are. To have witnessed so much, yet still know—fully, fully, fully know—that we will change the world, and can laugh doing it.

People like them—people like me—don't complain often. We know that the hard part is over. The hard part was yesterday. Childhood. Post-childhood. The shit we've already waded through and survived.

This? The financial struggles, the work, the writing it all down?

This is the glory.

I accidentally slid into your words

2010-09-04T07:05:00.013-04:00

during what was supposed to be a ten-minute breather.

I sat frightfully still before your sentences. My limbs, buzzing from caffeine overdose. My jitters, harsher now after that striking blow to my emotions. Your words, dear. They struck.

Ten minutes turned into twenty turned into an infinite space of feeling. Feelings that I'd commanded to lie dormant for much longer than this. "This" being.. what.. twenty months? Or more technically, eight since I last saw.. —but those wakening feelings are now redirected.

At some point, in the four years my ex and I bled together, we mutated from humans who loved each other to humans who loved the idea of loving the other.

Eventually, I poured into him not because I loved him, but because I was possessed by the need to test whether he could pour back. He hid the cracks well in that vessel. But when I found one crack, it led me to a thousand others. He never had the strength to retain us. But maybe I was the one who dragged a hammer to that strength.

I don't want to think about the past anymore. I am a new creation. I've strangled and suffocated those memories. They are dead to my destiny.

You and I haven't yet rummaged through the dark, thornier corners of each other. We share so much, and share so honestly, yet the entire world appears packaged in glitter and sense when I share it with you. All my dark stories begin to reek of light. And when you let your eyes into mine, I seem to forget how to channel all that pain.

And I don't know—is that a good thing?

How do two humans enter the pure space of a fresh relationship when they still carry cases and cases of so many unforgotten others?

When I heard you pray for the first time over the phone, I cried because I felt I'd waited all my life to hear someone pray like you. ...I say these words and immediately wish I wouldn't feel so intensely—so wildly—all the time.

I'm so unable to separate the passion from the plan. The plan, we said, is to question. To listen. To enter slowly and avoid falling passionately into another sticky hive of love filled with nothing of lasting substance.

But I can't help thinking: if you are the one who will end droughts with me, I wish, for one hour, you could roam my veins. I wish you could see how hard I've been scrubbing them clean for you.

And here, if you are that man, you would check me. Shush me. And, like you did earlier tonight, redirect me. Say, "God will do it. He just needs to be our focus."

In my human, fucked-up, adult thoughts, I don't know who you are yet. What role you will play. What role I will play for you. This is where we let God enter. You see, I've lost the ability to separate right-for-me from right-for-someone-else.

But I know this much:

If my younger, more powerful self had met that younger, more powerful version of you from your good stories, she wouldn't have spent so much of her life being distracted by all those useless others.

She would have waited and waited for you.

Lunch break & brain littered with caffeine.

2010-09-03T16:42:00.003-04:00

Thoughts before I return to work:

I never enjoyed dolls for the appropriate reasons. I liked flicking their plastic eyelids. They blinked so effortlessly. Like horribly possessed minions. I hated the hideous dots in their scalp, where hair spouted from.

I envy the superior wisdom of children. I want an hour alone with every child—to be the adult who says, "I believe you." And also: "I believe in you." And: "Question everything."

Yesterday, a six-year-old asked me what my favorite color is. I said, "Cerulean," then explained what cerulean looks like: the brightest spot in the ocean. It was my favorite Crayola as a kid. Cerulean and magenta. And possibly brown. To this day, my younger sisters remember that once, when I was 9, I survived a periwinkle phase.

In elementary school, I wanted to change my name to Esther, after the Jewish queen. As a teenager, I identified more with Esther of The Bell Jar.

I don't lie in my poetry. I really did make him drive to the airport and park. I was only 15.

I know a man who believes he exists simply to plump up his organs so that he can offer them to an ailing relative, then die having fulfilled at least one good purpose. When I have no words to tell my dad I don't want his organs, I pray simple, repetitive, violent prayers. Mostly, I pray the word "When."

Lately, I've dreamt about strangers—whole herds of strangers—praying. Twice in one week, S said she heard me pray in a spirit language in my sleep.

I wrote my first song when I was 12. I wrote my first poem when I was 13. I wrote and illustrated my first chapter book when I was 9. Then I decided it was a series, and wrote two more. My younger sister remembers the books better than I do.

When my sisters and I die, we each get one stud on Orion's Belt.

When I was 8, I wanted to be an astronaut. No one knew to tell me to study math and science to become an astronaut. So instead, I became a poet who writes about astronauts.

"Some freed slaves thrive in their freedom, but

2010-09-01T05:32:00.010-04:00

the rest of us are sick enough to miss the chains," she said.

[Your internal war is a lie.]

ju[ic]ebox: charging forward on my dotted line; one good dot at a time.

2010-08-22T00:49:00.015-04:00

keep your eyes ahead [the helio sequence]
benediction [the weakerthans]
globes and maps [something corporate]
in this hole [cat power; chan marshall cover]

thank you for your love [antony and the johnsons]

"What did you learn tonight? You're shouting so loud,

2010-08-21T06:34:00.004-04:00

you barely joyous broken thing. You're a voice that never sings, is what I say." One of the songs that preserved my life in the winter of 2006: "The Archer's Bows Have Broken" [Brand New].

____________________________
One reason Buddhism never sold me is the idea that I must die physically in order to experience reincarnation.

I want reincarnation now. Today.

(Don't you?)

What if—at the risk of sounding like a religious infomercial—I told you it's possible? What if I said: we can be new creations now?

I evolved into a new human being in the course of one year. Not evolved. Exchanged. I stepped out of my old body, ditched its skin on some sidewalk, and climbed into a new body.

I am a different beast now than I was even two months ago.

What if I said it's possible to adopt a new identity, discover a fresh purpose for life, and start over? No matter how old you are? No matter how stuck you feel? No matter how wretchedly time has dragged you forward into a stale life you never asked to live when you were a five-year-old dreamer?

Will you ask "how"?

Would you believe me if I was strange enough to say:
God desperately wants to speak to you—
to you, directly—

____________________________
"Who do you carry the torch for, my young man?
Do you believe in anything?
Do you carry it around just to burn things down?

Meet me tonight on the turnpike, my darling,
‘cause we believe in everything.
If we sweat all these debts then we’re sure to drown
so let’s strap ourselves up to this engine now
with a God who we found laying under the backseat."

Van Gogh, me, and the Big Bang Theory.

2010-08-18T03:26:00.012-04:00

Don't despair. In August of 1879, when Vincent Van Gogh was 26, his friends and family worried about him, too.

His brother Theo, 22 and already sending occasional financial support to his brother, suggested he take an engraving job. Theo said: "I was just afraid you were too fond of spending your days in idleness, and I thought you should put an end to it.”

Vincent's sister, Anna, told him to consider being a baker.

But Vincent knew, even at 26, that he wasn't a baker. He hadn't yet painted The Potato Eaters. He sketched church congregation members while (still) figuring out that he wasn't destined to be a missionary in the conventional way.

And Vincent wrote this about his strange, unemployed state:

May I observe that this is a rather strange sort of “idleness.” It is somewhat difficult for me to defend myself, but I should be very sorry if, sooner or later, you could not see it differently. I am not sure it would be right to combat such an accusation by becoming a baker, for instance. It would indeed be a decisive answer (always supposing that it were possible to assume, quick as lightning, the form of a baker, a barber or a librarian); but at the same time it would be a foolish answer, more or less like the action of a man who, when reproached with cruelty for riding a donkey, immediately dismounted and continued his way with the donkey on his shoulders.

A year later, in July of 1880, Vincent wrote Theo to say thanks for sending 50 francs. He still didn't have a conventional job. By then, Vincent was greatly disillusioned by the hypocritical, law-bound church. But his letters show that this disillusionment carved space for a deeper faith in God.

In that July letter, Vincent urges Theo to "try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them." He saw God in truer ways the church could never fathom!

What kills me is this: Vincent was never a prominent painter in his lifetime. He never had money. And what historians and critics mistake for "mental illness," I believe, was really the possession of his calling—that undying knowledge that he was painting with a purpose the size of galaxies.

Vincent wrote whole letters about the color yellow. He obsessed over artists' biographies. He knew his name and his art were supposed to sear his culture. But he saw little fruit.

Rainer Maria Rilke was the same way. Ever since his youth, the poet simply knew his art would shift entire paradigms in many worlds to come. Rilke knew this on a richer level than Van Gogh did. And he could settle for nothing less.

* * *

Today at lunch, C remarked about how "young people are naive in college and still believe they really can change the world." She laughed. She said, "It's cute."

I don't think anyone understands—no one (!!) except maybe one or two dear friends—that I don't simply "believe" I'm going to change the world. I really am going to. I'm not in this to publish a couple books. I don't want to scribble articles for magazines. It's not about the money. I don't care about the money. There's no money in poetry anyway.

I don't think anyone understands that I've bled this knowledge since birth. I don't belong on a corner shelf in the library. I belong in history books. My art will shatter our culture—and the future—in ways I haven't even begun to imagine. If not, kill me now.

Call it vanity. Call it a mental illness. Roll your eyes. Dismiss this. Dismiss every crazy word.

You see—every time I read Rilke and Van Gogh, I weep and weep. I take comfort in knowing how wretchedly they struggled with their own "knowledge." I feel an (irreverent? arrogant?) kinship I can't explain.

Both Rilke and Van Gogh borrowed. Struggled and borrowed. Borrowed homes. Borrowed money.

C, the physicist/pastor, explained:

When the Big Bang happened, its explosion was the product of borrowed energy. Sometimes, when we find ourselves sinking—borrowing money and energy from others—we descend into a space below the norm. As we descend, activity happens in a higher plane we cannot understand. And all that borrowed energy from our hole shoots up—

then bam: A miracle. Creation.

Every time I lose heart, I need to remember: I'm still so young. This is simply the beginning.

[Dangerous prayer: Let me decrease, Creator God, so that the 'stuff' of you may increase.]

"I think I might've inhaled you...

2010-08-17T08:22:00.011-04:00

I can feel you behind my eyes..."

________________
~~She motioned toward the couple in the television and said, "I've never felt that. I've never stared into~~ ~~someone's eyes for so long."~~

There are a thousand ways to look into his eyes, I wanted to say. The first time I "fell" in "love"—all quotation marked and ambiguous—I was young. In college. I slipped into his eyes and hunted for something substantial to justify the heaviness caking our bones.

But we'd fallen quickly. Out of sync with good instincts. We were all words, all disagreements, and wreck. Every time our eyes locked, I thought—without knowing what this meant—"Why aren't you him?"

~~I didn't know who "him" was at the time. For all I know, I could have meant God. Or... the person he promised he was. Or an entirely other man—someone I didn't know existed.~~

~~Once, I sank into a man's eyes and found only ice and questions. A man can be an open book—as honest as they come—yet offer no soft part of himself for you to rest inside.~~

~~Then,~~ one day, I located a door between dirt and the cosmos. I wrenched the door off its hinges—and, as I set to discover what it meant to live with this blurred divide that frees even God to become man—I stumbled into a man I wasn't looking for.

I asked time to pause for an evening and I stole that man from his world. Probed him about the decades I hadn't existed in that world. He held my hand. We walked in a thousand circles, crossing and recrossing the same streets in startling ways.

And in a bar with cherubim etched into the walls, he offered his eyes—all defenses shelved—and let me enter them.

All I wanted to say: I've looked everywhere for you.

In that moment, I didn't know whether I'd ever see him again. In that moment, I didn't know that one day, he would tell me he misses me.

And I didn't know: when he tells me he misses me, I will tell him the secrets I unraveled in his eyes. Against every wisdom, I will tell him I sense our future together like a memory. As though in a separate realm, our dreams together—our adventures and miracles—have already happened. "And we're simply living to find out what they were. And claim them."

I will say, "Sometimes, that's where the missing comes from. From outside of me. I miss everything that, to us here, hasn't technically happened yet."

He will understand. He will add: "...familiar."

Then one day, he will mail a song. The piano keys will bend me. I will want to cry. But I may refrain from asking, "How did you know to send this song?" Because chances are, he simply did his homework. He, like any smart man, has studied me.

Still... an unrelenting, magical part of me will want to believe—he must have always known.

I will watch him work. His eyes, reaching then relaxing, shuffling from corner to corner of his projects. And I—in all my foolishness—will believe that, of course, two people who have known each other for centuries—the way we have—will know exactly which songs are the right songs to send.

When I say "disaster," he will say no. He will gift words like "free." "Soar." "Inspired."

In the future, if we are among the lucky ones, a voice will ache to reach us. I pray this. That we will be ready for that voice. Only that voice could give us permission—and the power—to end droughts together.

My life is a video game.

2010-08-15T04:43:00.004-04:00

I made the mistake of admitting this out loud. I said to S, "We destroyed our last round. Now we're moving on to the next level. With next-level villains and next-level obstacles."

I'm either psychic, prophetic, or have an awful habit of speaking absurdities into being. Because suddenly, I feel trampled and subdued. Almost defeated.

But we can fix this.

I must stud my torn belt with sharper truths. Rile the spirit roaring in my sword. Because the word "defeated" tastes foul in my mouth. When I was a kid, my mom made a face when I said "fuck." But when I said "impossible," I got serious lectures.

Why do I still act surprised when an unexpected nuisance tumbles into my life after a streak of goodness?

Tonight's vision: I'm walking on a straight, wholly focused road. [Pressing onward, pushing every hindrance aside, out of my way]. Pellets and stones hurtle toward me from every direction. Linkin Park's "The Catalyst" blares from the red sky. And wings. So many wings.

A hundred wings surround me. My eyes, dead to distraction. My vision, sewn to the goal ahead and desensitized to the environment. The harder I stare ahead, the more visible the wings become. More tangible. All those blinding feathers.

Every wing slaps every pellet and stone back toward whatever dark thing chucked them my way.

Do you not know? Have you not heard? We already won this round, too.

Gratitude contains real seeds of power.

2010-08-12T20:54:00.003-04:00

Think about grace—a gift we don't deserve. Really think about it. Sometimes, I have to shove—physically shove—all that entitled American thinking out of my body to understand this.

Artists, I think, more easily plug into the idea that a realm outside of earth exists. Many artists know, also, that their gifts—their talents—are fragile and fleeting. That everything they create is, somehow, a gift.

I know artists who grapple with that "other" realm regularly. Poets who renounce the idea of a higher power (as taught to us by the media), but sit with their pens or laptops and beg some outside source to come in and feed them their words.

Those poets understand that discipline and craft are vital, but that "gift poems" also happen. Sometimes, words simply come. Sometimes, when you fear you've built your last poem, another one crashes into you. Another song. Dance. Film. Another vision.

More often than not, these are the poems that reek of truth. They aim deeper. Sharper. They seek to be Kafka's "axe for the frozen sea within us."

I don't want to entertain people. I want to penetrate them.

When we dig outside of ourselves—or deep, deep within ourselves—for inspiration and grasp for a Creator who exists beyond our limited abilities to create, that's when magic happens.

But what allows us to remain in that powerful space—what helps maintain a productive relationship with that Creator/Muse—is gratitude. The strength (and humility) to say, "My creations don't come from me. I am eternally grateful."

That acknowledgment—that grateful energy—breeds more of our creations. Our work. People. Whatever it is we're grateful for. Gratitude is an acknowledgment of Good Power.

* * *

When I—in tears, unemployed, wrestling my angels in this excruciatingly raw, humble space—told my mother the great news, she said, "Don't forget this place you're in. How grateful you are."

Then she told me a story.

When my sisters and I were younger and our mom worked as a waitress or telemarketer or slave at two or three places at a time to support us by herself,

she sometimes couldn't afford to put gasoline in her car.

She'd buy us food for the day and then put three or four dollars into her gas tank. And pray.

On the rare occasion that she had enough money to put an entire tank of gas into her car, our mom immediately got down on her knees and praised God for that small miracle.

"It will get harder and harder to remember. But it's dangerously important for you to remember where you come from and remain grateful."

How grateful I am for my mother.

ju[ic]ebox: the difference in rib size.

2010-08-08T07:59:00.001-04:00

[nts:] every man can be a story, but only one can be a soulmate.

no matter how convincing the others were.

stars [the xx]
end in disguise [the scarlet ending]
glósóli [sigur rós]
tech romance [her space holiday]
rabbit heart (raise it up) [florence + the machine]

[I don't miss the way I] LOVE(d) THE WAY YOU LIE(d).

2010-08-06T22:19:00.007-04:00

I can't tell you what it really is.
I can only tell you what it feels like.
And right now, it's a steel knife in my windpipe.

[Eminem]
[Video: Feat. Rihanna, Megan Fox, Dominic Monaghan]
_______________________________________

At 3:14 of the video, the girl probes into the lover's eyes. The camera shifts to his grin. Then the grin shifts. A switch whips something awake within him. He remembers that undone chunk of him that hates her. Hates himself for needing her.

She turns.

—Wait—Where you goin?—I'm leavin' you—No you ain't, come back—

She walks away. I know that soft panic in the calves.

He drops the packed bag. Smacks a glass off a table. She rushes behind the door. Shuts it. Pulls it. Desperate. He snatches the knob from the other side.

What ensues is what I've exhausted months torching. The locked doors. The pounding. The wet begging from the other side. The shoving it open. The screaming. And scratching.

The summer we dissolved into drifts of weed and bedsheets, did we laugh because we wanted to laugh or because we were possessed by it? Entire weekends in smoke and sake. Entire mornings, blurring together the way I love you spills into

I'ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire.

Once, I ran away from your friend's house in Diamond Bar—after gorging ourselves, eroding in the hot tub, guzzling television and vodka, sucking out that lazy taste of cannabis from your lips—I ran to my car.

You chased me. I snapped. More screaming. And I drove into the dark until I turned into a lit parking lot. To stop and weep. What I found: A church looming in front of me with a cross etched to its side wall.

That was the first time I'd prayed in a long time.

Yet that was only the beginning of our hell together.

How much I must have believed I loved you. And how often you said you loved me. But people who love each other could never do the things we did. Once, you took photographs of the bloody scratches, the bruises. How many hits did you take before you finally hit me back? Before you pushed me into the door and off the bed?

What were we screaming when the landlord broke into the house to ask if I was alright? What did I say when she told me the neighbors thought someone was screaming rape?

How many times did you hunt me in how many bars was I drinking with how many strangers?

And how high were you each time? Why did it take that—those glittery disasters—for me to believe that you loved me? That you did want me?

Once, the cops found me.
Once, my friend's boyfriend rescued me from a sidewalk.
Once, I locked myself in the bathroom with a man whose name I didn't know.
Once, I lay down, wrecked, in the hallway of a strange apartment building, smoking cigarettes until I puked.
Once, I smoked enough to pass out in a bathtub streaming water.

In less than 24 hours, Eminem and Rihanna's "Love the Way You Lie" video reached over 2 million views from countless viewers who were there. If not physically, then emotionally.

Some people think the video is "too much."

Then there are the 2 million. The people who know.

People who know what it means to be so desperate for touch, that they'd bruise for it. To want another body to warm the bodies we own—the bodies we've learned to hate—enough to beg our demons to stay.

Even after we hurt each other, we always called. Always crawled into our torment again. Drove so physically deep into each other to escape the truth that we were lonely.

We were created to be loved. But you were easy. And I was easy. So we never thought to pause and ask, "Created to be loved by whom?"And we got stuck in it for years.

Only now, long after we've finally rid our bones of each other—long after we've finally admitted how much we deserve love and not that bullshit—do I realize

we were so much lonelier together, weren't we?

Last night, I drove him to street number 421.

2010-08-06T15:49:00.007-04:00

"That's where you murder him," I advised. All of us: A slew of assassins.

After the mission—which involved pee yellow lights and dancing in the alleys—I spoke Korean to someone else. A gorgeous woman in her early thirties, leading me to—where?

I'd never spoken Korean in a dream, so of course this was real—all those steel stairs.

All those people marching like drones—those expensive suits stamped with other people's names, all those kitschy devices—marching through a thousand freeways swirling over each other like roller coasters clustered in a dump site.

Then, the foldable chairs. In an open air, dusty red arena. Facing forward, waiting for someone to address the chairs. And all of you—every single one of you—standing between the chairs. Talking eagerly. Each of you grabbing me to say "Tomorrow! Your house!" (or other nonsensical bullshit) as I walked from the front to the back. Through all sorts of twisty aisles. All sorts of dead flowers.

And the man selling the flowers. Matching giant orange leaves to giant orange leafy people. Buses. Dirt roads. So much driving. Then the chairs again.

And all of you—in those chairs—and your smiles. The smiles of people who try desperately to be present, but are really cut up about some disaster tucked away in their lungs.

I felt I was the only one who could truly see. The only one who understood how much everyone seemed to want to peel off their faces and scream. All of us, desperate for someone to understand. For someone to say, Hurt. Hurt. It's okay to bleed sometimes.

Then the clapping. All that fucking clapping. And the girl who reminded me that I was one of them. ("I can't be one of them.")

—I woke up and immediately thought, What did that man have to die for?

If LOST taught us anything,

2010-07-28T22:37:00.002-04:00

it taught us that sometimes, we must perform absurd tasks—risk appearing foolish in front of everyone—to fulfill our destinies.

But step one is believing you have a destiny.

Step two is believing it to the point of bloodshed. Clutching your destiny like a sick child. Catering to its needs, its demands.

And step three? Step three will ruin you.

Step three contradicts step two. It requires that you hold your destiny loosely. Clutch the child, but keep him at arm's length. Care for him, but understand he may die in a hiccup. Understand that your destiny—as viciously important as it is—only represents a tiny hint of the universe's grander scheme.

This is less spiritual, more truth. Less frou-frou, more a means to survival. Highly evolved thinking. When we hold our destinies tightly while holding them loosely, we open ourselves to possibility. We let the universe (or the Creator of the universe) become bigger than we are.

We give in to the idea that what we perceive to be our destiny might actually still be too small. And we become open to change. Open to greatness.

In this openness exists freedom. Failure is no longer failure. Failure becomes a rerouting. A change in command. The only thing left to do, then, is to listen. To ask: "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" And to remain absolutely still until you get a response. Don't react to your circumstances. Don't settle. But wait with an activeness. Pour your energy into the vision of your destiny.

It's prayer as much as it is physics. Shoving energy after energy into this vision until you witness that quantum leap. A sudden burst, a sudden appearance of movement upward.

Risk appearing foolish.

Dear friend who believes in destiny: This is what will keep you sane—what will keep the knives in the knife drawer.

It's easy to focus on the bullshit. The bullshit being, money. Income versus expenses. How prepared we are on paper. Experience, as defined by the world. Statistics. History. Other people's biographies. What they say is "practical."

But I'm not in this to be practical. And I'm not in this to repeat someone else's predictable biography.

I'm in this to destroy. Redefine. Create.

So COME ON, Quantum Leap. Where the fuck are you?!

The Maid of Honor Speech***

2010-07-28T22:22:00.006-04:00

[disclaimer]: I was speaking in front of a crowd of pretty conservative, but loving Christian Indians. So I bleeped the cursing, whited-out the ethereal jargon I normally use here, cut out the violence, and put in a lot of good Jesus love.

But real, uncensored Jesus love. Read on (if you dare).
________________________________
***for my beloved best friend, R, on her wedding day, July 24, 2010:
(note: S is the other Maid of Honor)

I remember one particular night, S, R, and I sat on R's bed. And prayed.

That night, we prayed for everything. But we especially prayed for... our future husbands. (Cue: laughter). The three of us made a pact. We vowed that whenever any one of us had a boyfriend, the other two would grill him. Interview him. Make sure he passes every husband test.

S, R, and I say, all the time, that we are blessed because all three of us were raised by mothers who prayed since we were very little girls—for good men in our futures. Good husbands. (Our other friend R raises an eyebrow at S's mom, who is in the reception hall. She nods fervently).

All our lives, we thought this meant, a perfect man. With the perfect appearance. Seven feet tall! With the perfect job. A doctor who is a lawyer on the weekends! (B, the groom, looks sick to his stomach with nervousness).

But I've learned now.. that this was the wrong way for us to think about our future husbands.

A few years ago, when we were in college, R lived in an apartment with J (fellow bridesmaid) and two of our other friends, V and L. L had a fake tooth. A very expensive fake tooth. (Cue: a very dramatic reading).

And one day, somehow, L's expensive fake tooth fell—OUT of her mouth!! And down into the bathtub drain!

All the girls panicked!

And B, who happened to be there, got down—on his knees—and unclogged and unclogged that drain until he retrieved Lydia's tooth. (Everyone cheers!!).

Annie Aunty, it looks to me that all that praying you did for your daughter—for her to find a good strong man who can love and take care of her—it looks like all those prayers (I choke up and stifle sobs here, totally unplanned) were answered. Through B.

It's difficult today for young women like us to understand why Apostle Paul says the husband should be "the head of the household." (R, our resident "domesticated feminist" bride, nods with vigor.) Why a wife should "submit" to her husband the way the church submits to Christ.

But then again, B fully embodies the model of Paul's ideal husband—somebody who loves and serves his wife as Christ served the church. Getting down on your hands and knees. Washing your feet. Or—digging through disgusting bathtub mildew.

Not for your tooth, R, but for your friend's tooth. (Everyone cheers again!!)

With a husband like that, why wouldn't we want to spend our lives serving him—and cooking and cleaning for him, too?! (R, tears in her eyes, nods in agreement and smiles).

B, R, the two of you are blessed.

Yes, you're blessed because you love each other. And yes, you're blessed to have so many loving people around you. But really, you're blessed because you both come from communities of deep prayer.

This week, during all the wedding preparations, at both R's house and B's house, I witnessed both sets of families praying. Fervently.

You two both come from such a prayer-focused community, which means you have real access to the power of the Living, Breathing, Loving God. And when things get hard—because they will get hard sometimes—praise God because you have so much to be thankful for.

Praise God. And allow God's greatness so fully into your lives that you laugh at your anxieties. Then the hard times will come, then they'll go, and you'll have a much more interesting story to tell your grandkids!

Thank you both for blessing the rest of us by sharing your love tonight. Let's raise a toast... to this beautiful couple. Cheers!

"Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,

2010-07-13T14:21:00.009-04:00

or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hills in a balance?"

* *

Seven boxes, two suitcases, and a duffel bag—all choked with nothing. All of it, meaningless. I landed at LAX fifteen days ago and slammed into an entire life I must have been living, somehow, already, before I arrived.

No respite. No time to transition. No "it's been so long, please, a glass of ale for you." —smash. Responsibilities. Tasks. Either news or bad news. Nothing genuinely good. So many voice messages dripping with such forlorn voices. From all over the world. People flailing their weak, alien arms in my space, begging me: Please call back. Why haven't you come to see me? Why haven't I heard from you? Why why—

I must have time traveled. How else do I explain this life? These two weeks of eternal catch up. And me, frazzled. Like someone who was plucked from time, then flicked back in. With no notes. No clues.

—breathe— ...California has such empty skies.

I spend time with my hands in the air. Grabbing for crumbs of song. Fragments my angels might graciously spill for me. Praise in distress. I practice and practice this: praise in distress. I talk large talk. Smile like smiling this much is my default. But it's new.

My whole life, I prayed. But this kind of prayer—the waiting kind, the patience, the burning expectancy, the hot praise when nothing should be praised, the utter stupidity of all those obnoxious, obnoxious people of faith—this

is new.

I wonder: Do I wear this well?

Or do I sound crazier than before?

* *

"A voice says, 'Cry out.'
And I said, 'What shall I cry?'"

She requested a poem from me.

2010-07-07T05:25:00.004-04:00

For her wedding reception.

"I write about knives and abortions and devastating breakups, and you want me to write something for the day you celebrate your love with your soul mate?"

And there. Those sickly words: soul mate.

I protested that creature—the elusive soul mate—for years. Denounced its existence the way people bash God. It didn't matter that everyone around me believed they were finding theirs. Even in the presence of their wretchedly palpable joy, I didn't buy it. I wouldn't believe it until I saw it for myself.

Tonight, on a hunt for something else, I found this. Questions I wrote in December of 2008, one month before I broke up with the man I will be eternally grateful I finally learned to let go of.

And suddenly, I saw lights. Flutes. Winged creatures.

I understood, miraculously, that what my mother did—marrying that stranger—broke the curse. After years of unhealthy persistence and the kind of idealism that almost killed her, she taught her daughters, It's okay to be wrong. He doesn't have to be The One just because you said he was, year after year.

When my mom finally fell in love, she fell in love fast. I was too young to understand it. Too "young" emotionally. Spiritually. Only three years ago.

I hated how joyful she was. I hurt myself because I wanted to hurt her. I didn't know why she needed love. Why—after years of convincing us we could thrive as powerful, single women who never needed men—she decided to retract her words. Why, suddenly, she wanted to eat with someone new. Accept his roses. Stuff him in picture frames, then wake up to that same face.

That was the year the boy kissed someone else. That was the year I slept with other people. That was the year I drank myself to countless stupors and I treated my own mother like a criminal.

But three years, a million prayers, and entire lifetimes older, I am daily on my knees in utter horror of what I almost became. What I almost let myself believe... or—no—what I prevented myself from believing.

Last week, I listened to my mother tell my best friend about the man she married. I had never before seen my mom glow this way. This supernatural way.

Now, my mom tells me it's okay to believe in a "soul mate." That he does exist. That he's a good man. A good man who won't hurt me. That all those years didn't fuck us up. That if she can heal and find love and pour herself out for this new person, I can do it, too.

I'm not yet going to write, here, how I know she's right. But... I swear on everything I know... she's right. It does exist.

So maybe if I channel this new knowledge, I'll be able to write the first un-bittersweet love poem of my life. For my best friend and her husband-to-be.

And then, after that, maybe I'll start writing my own.

Little Girl

2010-07-04T00:12:00.001-04:00

you tortured little girl
showing them what love is all about
where did all the time go?
everywhere it's gone gone gone

[danger mouse + sparklehorse + julian casablancas]

* * *

It frightens me how easy it is to ditch your fiercest dreams for an unplanned (but delicious enough) path that happens to form before you.

There will always be two roads. But if one road is within reach and the other appears impossible, which will you choose? No. I don't care which you'll choose. I want to know why. What fuels your dreams?

Who—or what—taps your buttons? Who makes you move?

Friday marks the exact middle date of the year.

2010-06-30T00:25:00.000-04:00

182 days before. 182 after.

Today: Day 180 of The Year of Birthing. That's what this one was named. A little over 180 days ago. Before visiting R in Uganda. Maybe even before Grandpa died.

Some feelings, you can't explain. And I felt this year before it happened. When everyone asked, Why are you moving to California, I offered logic. Small, human reasons. But I held my breath for the "real" reason. The one I felt, but didn't yet know.

When you're surrounded by men and women who will flood history books with the outpour of their brilliant lives and smash the world on its side, surprise is inevitable. The friends I keep are the ones whose words and actions possess the power to indent.

Our lives? Infested with surprise.

Sometimes, someone enters your life and you wonder why this person was, impulsively, scribbled into the script. You hold him—this human curve ball. Want painfully to love him. But you wonder why this should be allowed. Why now. Why suddenly. Why so soon.

I say, him. I mean, or her.

My two dearest friends and I rarely exist in the same city, let alone the same state or country. If one of us is in California, the other is in Greece. Or Boston. Or Uganda. Canada. Korea.

When one of us returns to the Pacific Ocean after another life-altering episode elsewhere, dangerous sparks shoot out from every direction. We find a home. Fix a meal. Eat with four different hot sauces. Laughter happens. Neighbors complain of noise.

And we pray. Sometimes, we curse. Cry. Mostly? We wait. Listen. Then the universe throws a thousand curve balls. Some of them, beautiful. Some, violent. Every single one of them, wretchedly painful.

Because pruning... growth... never settling? Stings like a bitch. The earth fears greatness. Pulls us into its dirt with every selfish pull of gravity. And by greatness, I don't mean "talent." I don't mean skill or education or money or anything that could stain us with arrogance.

By "greatness," I mean faith. In the impossible. In the belief that children often know more than adults. That the galaxies are wired so the underdogs win. I mean faith, as in the undying certitude that the most inexperienced, scrawny, underqualified person is, by the Universe's standards, the exact person to defeat giants.

My friends believe this irrational jargon. Wholeheartedly. It's painful to watch our lives do backflips and tumble off cliffs over and over again. To watch us climb mountains, collapse, die, then resurrect and climb another fucking mountain.

Suddenly, today, three days before the turning point of the Year of Birthing, we are offered another dose of painful growth. Surprises with little tags that read, "Do you trust me?"

We know nothing but dreaming. We breathe the impossible. But sometimes, we can't bear it. Sometimes, we want nothing more than to be "normal." Give in to mediocrity.

But as harsh as life can be, I can't imagine a life in which I am not constantly, desperately, on my knees.

Suddenly, this month—today—we have a million new reasons to stay on our knees and never get up until that loud, sparkling voice shouts, NOW.

"How selfish of you to believe in the meaning of all the bad dreaming."

2010-06-24T09:00:00.002-04:00

"Metal Heart" - Cat Power
___________________________________

What I was afraid to tell you is this: I wasn't just crazy. I shot my emotions at the universe like bullets. Shattered everything in sight. Everyone. I didn't have a drinking problem. I had a life problem. Drinking simply fanned the fire. And there was so much fire. This was me. Before.

I cheated on that boyfriend. Then I told him that I did. The way I tell the story, I'm the good guy. I play the victim. How else do you tell a story in which you completely fuck up someone's worldview?

The cancer in our relationship evolved arms and fangs. We lived a violent disaster. And we thought it was love. Maybe it was. I don't know. I just know it wasn't always.

It wasn't my fault. Of course that's what I tell. Girls don't cheat on guys because they want sex, I say. It happened because I hunted fulfillment and satisfaction and love from all the wrong places. All the wrong people.

He didn't love me. He loved the idea of me. Four years, and I remember no joyful birthday. But birthdays aren't the issue. I don't enjoy my birthday to begin with. I've delved into irrational fights about it with friends. But... isn't the right person supposed to change that? Help you heal all the ways you don't understand love? I depleted myself for him. Sacrificed everything. And then I cracked.

After it ended, I unlearned how to love. Trained myself not to need appreciation. Acknowledgment. Taught myself to stop giving. To refrain from spoiling him -- whoever "he" was. To give little. Expect little. And avoid passion at all costs.

I talk like it's been years. But time is relative. And eighteen months changes so much.

The thing is this: I don't believe I deserve someone good. I'm so wretchedly idealistic about almost everything. Yet I don't believe love exists for me. I've made too many mistakes. Fucked up too many people. I've always had this fear that whenever I let someone grow attached to me, I ruin him somehow.

Maybe it's truth. Maybe paranoia.

I tell the story in a poem in the book I will publish. I have no secrets anymore. And I've cried to the point of delirium. Sometimes in the arms of my best friends. Weeping, But when I find the right person, and I let myself love again, what if he reads my book. Or his mother reads my book. And he runs away from all that truth?

If I discovered a man I care about has the capacity to be as vicious and evil as me, would I date him?

I don't deserve love. But then, there's that word. Deserve. Maybe it's not about "deserving." I say to S, you are due a good man because you've waited so patiently, so beautifully and humbly for one. But maybe that's not the way it works.

Because... what about grace? Do I believe in grace even here? In this wild, godless realm?

R, who has a very firm faith in the Christian God, once asked, "How do you understand God's mercy? How can you understand that God can forgive a rapist as equally as he forgives someone who simply lusts?"

He asked this last summer. And I began to cry. Heavily. And I said, "When you've tasted your own hell, created with your own hands, and you truly understand how disgustingly human you can be... when you discover your capacity to damage other people, that's when you can fully understand God's mercy. Grace. The need for forgiveness."

How else am I supposed to operate on new terms? Carry myself as a whole human being who dares to be "good"? Who dares to love? How else am I supposed to believe that others can change unless I believe that I can? That I have changed.

If I behaved in accordance with my past actions because I believed that was the person I was doomed to be, I would not be as well-adjusted and joyful as I let you believe I am. It takes deliberate effort... and a lot of faith... and so much grace... to simply exist. To let myself love anyone. And not just romantic anyones. But my mother. My friends. The strangers downstairs.

Maybe this is a hidden reason I love the incarcerated population so much. Because we all fuck up. Those guys are simply the ones who got caught. The ones the rest of us are allowed to point at and say, "But I wasn't that bad." No. I was.

I didn't get here on my own. "Here" being, the decent person I've tried to be in the last year and a half. But every day, I'm afraid I will slip into "her" again. And I see it in my best friends' eyes. In their voices, when I tell them a story involving alcohol. They worry. They're afraid, too.

But "there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear."

So what is that? Perfect love?

Spent the last 2 hours at police station. In a skanky "dress," flip flops, and towel.

2010-06-23T06:25:00.001-04:00

Then spent $400 CASH to get into my fucking bedroom. But I got to watch hot Israeli man (with hot Israeli accent) use power tools.

I live in Brooklyn. I move to California in six days, but for now, I live in Brooklyn. Specifically, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where railroad apartments are the norm for three-bedroom joints.

I live in the shit end of our railroad apartment. This means my room connects to another room. So I have a separate outside door. In order to go to the common area or the bathroom, I exit my room, take my keys, walk through the building hallway, then enter my apartment with a key.

I never forget my key.

Until tonight. Six days before I move away.

Tonight: the night before the most important job interview of my life.

I was wearing a super comfortable, albeit skanky, dress. I was home alone. Covered in bruises and cuts, the dress was the only thing I could wear without irritating the wounds on my shoulder, boob, knees, hands, et cetera, from yesterday's biking "accident."

I took a towel to go to the bathroom and wash up for bed.

And I locked myself out.

V, one of my roommates, is currently in California. C, my other roommate, is either not home, too drunk or high to wake up, or dead on his futon.

I banged on the door. Rang the obnoxious buzzer. For a good twenty minutes. I can't believe C's PITBULL didn't even wake up.

I contemplated breaking my doorknob with the fire extinguisher. But my left hand is out of commission because I was, of course, in that biking disaster. It hurt simply to knock. With my right hand.

So I did what any self-respecting woman would do.

With my towel draped around my shoulders like a tattered shawl, I walked to the police station, four blocks down. My hair, in a crazy ponytail. I had just been crying to my best friend on Gchat for one reason or another, so I looked like a wreck.

I served as great entertainment for many of the police officers. I'm good with police (though I generally dislike most officers). I've practiced talking to them since I was four.

Eventually, after some disheartening phone failures at the station, then after yelling at a couple locksmiths over the phone, one agreed to show up at my door without taking down credit card information.

I waited at the police station for an hour for the locksmith. One of the male officers, who looked young and Filipino, sort of took to me. Asked if I needed the bathroom. Made jokes. Laughed at MY jokes. Good cop. He said, "See? Everything always works out eventually."

$400. Cash. Is what I paid to get into my room.

Hot Israeli locksmith said the fee was $555 with credit card, $470 with cash, of which only $50 goes to the outsourced, freelance locksmith, and the rest to the bigshot locksmith company. Oh God, was I livid. But what could we do but shrug? We were both getting ass fucked by The Man.

I took locksmith's personal business card. Told him I'd tell everyone I know (who might get locked out) to go straight to him instead of going through the big company.

Locksmith left. Then called my cell and said, "What if it was $400 cash?" Pretty much, we agreed that we would tell bigshot company that he only opened my door (and didn't replace the entire lock, which he did). This would let me pay less and give him a teensy bit extra to put in his pocket.

I checked my bank statement online. Saw that if I throw away $400, I could get by if I starve and don't go out forever. So I hopped in hot Israeli man's car and he drove me to the bank.

The guy seemed genuinely worried that I would tell the company that hired him. Kept teaching me what to say: "I only opened your lock; I didn't replace your cylinder." Then began repeating, "Just.. well.. just don't answer any unknown numbers." So I know he was telling me the truth about our little deal.

What did I learn today?

1) My subconscious self-sabotages worse than I'd imagined. After a year of being fine, I lock myself out the night before one of the most important meetings of my life.

2) Not all cops are evil.

3) My hatred for large corporations that take advantage of their consumers (me) and their poorly paid immigrant workers (hot Israeli man) remains fiery.

Now I BETTER ace my Skype interview with my dream job-for-now. I hope the karma of helping out the little guy balances out the bad karma I might get for lying and "screwing" the big corporation. Karma shows no mercy, but God does, right? I mean, wasn't Jesus all about fucking off on The Man and sneaking help to the little guy? ::sheepish smile::

ju[ic]ebox: dancing with cardboard boxes in the storm (au revoir pour maintenant).

2010-06-23T00:57:00.001-04:00

to wish impossible things [the cure]
okay lover [blip blip bleep]
brooklyn blurs [the paper raincoat]
breakdown [mae]
star eyes (i can't catch it) [danger mouse + sparklehorse (feat. david lynch)]

For the fucking love of God, I need to stop psychoanalyzing myself.

2010-06-21T11:09:00.009-04:00

I know too much.

It's a good thing the monsters in my brain compensate by shoving most of what I know behind a blackout curtain.

I have eight days before I shuffle back to California. And I'm going into early panic flight mode. The mode during which I seek out death and disaster, pray for accidents and hunt every excuse to disappear.

I'm not good at leaving. I'm not good at leaving because I've done it too many times.

You can always -- WITHOUT FAIL -- judge a(n American) (gen X/Y) girl based on her favorite childhood Disney princess/Disney movie. Sick, I know. But such is the American way.

If she loves Beauty and the Beast (like my mother), her demeanor is generally sweet. Unassuming. But watch for a severe messiah complex. She's easy to manipulate. A dreamer. To a fault. But unbelievably loyal. And pure (whatever that means). But she sticks around because she wants to change you. That's her Achilles.

My animated counterpart? The worst chick. For years, I answered The Little Mermaid without thinking. Without understanding what this means for me.

Ariel? A complete idiot. Always looking for something better. Somewhere else to go. Never content to stay in one place or settle down. A dreamer... but not a dreamer who gets lost in her dreams like Belle. Ariel makes her dreams happen. Even if it means making a lot of stupid mistakes.

She acts without thinking. She is the only Disney princess who ignores her foreboding animal friends! She completely dismisses their warnings. Fights to her detriment for whatever silly goal comes next.

She deserts her father, completely ditches her family and friends, and sells her soul to the devil for a chance at freedom. Exploration. Love.

And by love, I mean lust. She's the only Disney princess to fall for a guy who's stupid enough to crawl into a spell and fall for someone else. Every other Disney prince? Persistent, loyal, relatively stable, and noble. Prince Eric? Passive. Doesn't know what he wants. Falls for Ariel for all the wrong reasons. In this movie, Ariel is the one who pursues. Pursues and pursues until she loses herself.

Then she marries him.

I forget where I was going with this. But this morning, on my way home from M's apartment on the Upper West Side, I obsessed over my theory. Obsessed into a fervor of mild depression (not really).

I understand now that my girlfriends who loved Cinderella are the ones who go years without boyfriends. They wait for their Prince Charming, who will push away all of his pretty girl prospects, arrive magically, and say, You have no idea how long I've been looking for you. With her fucking shoe in his hand.

I never understood it. But the older I get, the better that looks.

Then I got home and my instinct was to cram in my earphones and blast The Decemberists, which is NEVER a good sign. Last week, two exboyfriends had birthdays. I only messaged the good one. But, when the younger brother of the other one messaged me, I wasn't unhinged.

Aware of my flight response AND coming to terms with being a better behaved girl? Good God, I think I'm finally growing up.

...I should stop calling myself 'girl' though.

Actually, I'm moving to California to find a few physicists.

2010-06-13T17:18:00.004-04:00

Today is day seven (of seven) of daytime sequestering and extravagant meditation.

I finally know what I'm looking for. Whom I'm looking for. The important, muted people back home. Those explosive heartbeats you feel in a mess of humans gripping the idea of unfettered possibility.

And by humans, I mean artists. By artists, I mean physicists especially.

Maybe I've been stuck on William Gibson's Neuromancer for too long. Or two years of reading and rereading a collection of Madeleine L'Engle's essays have unhinged me.

Maybe I need to reconcile my irrational fear of the moon.

Whatever it is, I've been obsessed. Science fiction was my favorite genre as a kid, but academia slapped it out of me and I'm only now permitting myself to return to it.

Obsessed with what? Creation. Galaxies. The obvious (and frightening) relativity of time. How easy it is to time travel and alter both the past and present if you let yourself.

Also: the fact that everything they taught us about electrons is turning out to be a lie. That string theory is the next best Theory of Everything. That this is what they call it! "The Theory of Everything"! That anyone who talks about physics without talking about God (or anyone who talks about God without talking about physics) is wholly missing the point.

The point being... we should never stop exploring. Asking. Discovering.

My friend (whose angels come to him in the form of astronauts) said to me yesterday that he's been thinking about singularity.

I'm going to butcher this, so don't hold me to anything I say:

This is the third time he has mentioned singularity. The idea that at every point at which matter exists -- a body, a star -- is the center of the universe (given that the universe, in the spacetime continuum, is infinite).

This means, from where you are standing, if you look left, down, up, sideways -- anywhere beyond yourself -- you will find infinity. That you are a singularity. You are the center of the universe at that point. And while this is true for you, this is true for me. For your father. For everyone and everything.

We can all be the absolute center of the spacetime continuum at the same time and not contradict the importance of each other. The universe does revolve around you. And me, too.

So goes the theory. I think.

Then I exclaimed: "You just answered my Question!"

Silence over the phone.

I said:

The question I couldn't put to rest this week was this: HOW can I possibly believe that God can hear me? That he hears my shouting when he has the option to hear the more beautiful, humble prayer of a struggling mother in Malawi?

How are we supposed to understand that God can love all 6 billion people not as a collective, but as individuals? And equally? And respond to every tearful word?

Suddenly, my mismatched, elementary theories of singularity, which I stole from whatever eloquent schpiel my friend gave me, helped me understand how we can each be utterly important and listened to. Simultaneously. How it's not a contradiction. Or impossible.

It's physics.

There is a woman in Altadena I have to go see. A physicist who breathes impossible occurrences like a 9 to 5 job.

So I'm going to California (temporarily -- a few years? a few months?) to do real research. Holy. It JUST NOW occurred to me to find work with a scientist. Wheels are turning.

Are you hearing this?!

I've been conducting an experiment.

2010-06-09T18:07:00.000-04:00

The experiment involves boatloads of music, glass after glass of New York tap water, much tree-watching, several books (including a Strong's Bible Concordance with a Hebrew and Greek lexicon), a roll of toilet paper, my white journal and Pilot G-2 (0.7mm) pen, and my oversized bed.

Today is day three of seven.

On day eight, these ingredients will inspire an explosion. Possibly a literal one. More likely, a spiritual one. Maybe one only I can feel. I don't know yet. I just know it exists.

The end of my seven-day experiment will also mark the middle-ish point of the Gregorian calendar year. The tipping point of "The Year of Birthing." Call me superstitious, but that sounds like something worth noting.

On Day One of my experiment, I discovered, to my relief, that C.S. Lewis was a diehard Darwinist. A proponent of the Genesis stories as being "myths."

"Jack" Lewis (as his friends called him) wrote over fifty books, of which I've only read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Screwtape Letters. I've resisted his other books because I'm generally allergic to overtly "Christian" literature -- especially non-fiction, essay-ish "Christian" lit. Especially non-fiction, essay-ish "Christian" lit that my "Christian" friends recommend or buy for me.

But after doing a LOT of research on Jack, I think I'm going to give a couple of his books a shot. Starting with his science fiction.

I have nothing important to blog, really.

(Are the new viewers gone yet?)

Except this:

The older I get, the more questions I have. Every answer I receive about love, life, and angels only spurs a thousand more questions. And in that constant, unrelenting search, I've learned to unearth joy. To find stability in absolute uncertainty.

Only when we begin to admit how little we know and how impossible it is to comprehend creation and science and the idea of a "loving" God... only then -- in our most beaten state of humility and doubt -- can we find enlightenment. Joy.

In the beginning of Christianity (which is like yesterday in comparison to the history of the world), there were six sects -- five of which did not conceive of a "hell" as we're forced to believe today. Only the Christians in Rome developed an idea of "hell" as being a place of eternal damnation. But because of Constantine and all that jazz, this particular sect of "Christianity" is the one that became popular.

If you inductively rip apart every instance of the word "hell" in the Bible, you'll see that it was wildly mistranslated and misinterpreted.

"All I have ever said is that the New Testament plainly implies the possibility of some being finally left in ‘the outer darkness.’ Whether this means…being left to a purely mental state…or whether there is still some sort of environment, something you could call a world or a reality, I would never pretend to know." - C. S. Lewis.

Fire and brimstone? All bullshit. At least, the way we think of it.

I'm starting to figure out my passions in life.

My passions. Why I write. Why I exist. What keeps me from taking a knife to my own existence. What fuels me. What guides me. What I love.

I love people.

And, having grown up with the behind-the-scenes lard of institutionalized religion, but having understood the inexplicable power of a God of love and miracles, I've figured out that one of my small roles is this:

To help heal the unseen wounds of everyone who's been raped by church.

They. Were. Wrong. Your life isn't headed for hell. There exists so much love for you. I can't believe a couple of confused idiots shut down and froze every desire in you to find it. But "finding it" is relative in the first place, isn't it?

"The kingdom of God is within you."

What a strange, existential bunch.

2010-06-04T18:37:00.004-04:00

I glanced at the crowd in my Gchat list and read the following statuses:

* Miracles sometimes look different than what we expect. - J.W.
* Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die. - J.D.
* Everybody's dying, bitch. Let's get you some fruit. - K.D.
* Finds your lack of faith disturbing. - D.H.
* I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape. - E.C.

________
[edit]: Yes, I'm well aware that many of these are quotes. ahaha.. =)

"Approximately 25% time travel," one job opening mentioned

2010-06-03T03:44:00.001-04:00

in parentheses on its Idealist.org profile.

I stared at those words for a lot longer than I should have.

After a good while--after a sloppy detour into imagination--I finally realized that the phrase meant, "Approximately 25% of the time, you will travel." Then I said "Ohh" out loud and put away that suddenly uninteresting job.

Tonight, a good friend mentioned having witnessed a man ride a tandem bike alone. A man with three wheels steering among obnoxiously smiley couples. Those matching helmets. "And how tragic," the friend said. Or was it "sad." This guy, alone, riding with an empty rear banana seat.

"What?" I said. "You, of all people, should know that this man is the lucky one. He's got the best tandem bike partner of them all."

Knowing me and my unhinged spiritual side, this friend, quite averse to all things "religion," made a snide allusion to "Footprints," that cheesy poem about someone walking in the sand, finding two sets of footprints in the sand, and voila, God carries him, something or other, blahblah.

"NO," I said. A little defensively. "I didn't mean God."

I didn't get to explain to B, the friend who understands time travel as intuitively as I do (and much better than I do in the rational or theoretical or scientific-ish sense), that what I meant was this:

Most of those people who rode their tandem bikes with their partners are the kind of people so sucked in to the "now": I'm alone "now," I need someone "now." Those are the people who stall their lives while recklessly groping crowds for "the one." And they're the ones who settle. Repeatedly. Who, for the chance to brush their teeth with someone, crash into relationship after relationship.

They--we--are the ones unable to time travel. Unable to see that in some dimension, some frame of time, they've--we've--already found "the one." We are loved.

The man riding the tandem bike alone knows that the love of his life exists. And that that love is the one "of his life."

He believes he will find her when he finds her (or him). And because of his flesh piercing faith, he won't waste his days looking. In fact, that invisible person he has yet to meet is so ingrained into his psyche, it doesn't even occur to him to find a place holder.

He simply lives his life. Knowing how loved he is by this yet-to-be-met person.

That is the kind of faith I would die for. To not have to crawl into so many dark places digging and digging for scraps of affection.

The way I believe in people is stupid.

2010-05-30T21:09:00.000-04:00

Evolutionarily unproductive. Our genes are selfish, they say. It's the only way to survive.

But I was never in this to survive.

In a room clogged with hungry people, if starving means everyone else will be fed, the only thing that will bring me joy is starving. It's not a selfless thing. I'm not trying to be "the better person" or "the bigger person." It's not a guilt thing, either.

I really don't know what it is. I'm simply wired this way.

For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted the best for people. I've always believed in people. And I believe people. I grew up in the pit of American violence and American poverty. But for some reason, "every man for himself" and "the man with the most toys wins" stopped making sense to me at a very early age.

I have enough street smarts not to be taken advantage of, but I've retained this weird sense of wanting good for everyone. And by everyone, I mean even the resident assholes and the crazies of the world. If a child rapist says to me, "I want to change. I want to learn to love somebody," I will believe him. I will believe him until my bones ache and nothing anybody says would change my mind.

I don't know what I want to "be." But I know what I want to do. I want to encourage people for the rest of their lives.

I want everyone whose path I cross to know this:

You are beautiful. Truly, truly, uniquely beautiful.

and

You are so deeply loved.

and

You can do anything. Nothing is impossible.

Because I, for some reason, believe that nonsense, too. I simply always have. Since birth, the world has looked very small to me. Accessible and sized to fit in my little palms, full of miniature people bumping into each other, rotten with pain and flaws caused by others with pain and flaws, but innately desiring good. Everyone, craving love.

A woman named Amy changed my life when I was 10. She was a social worker. Or maybe a volunteer. At a domestic violence shelter. She played games with my sisters and me. Made us laugh. Something about her existence--her simply being there and laughing with us--made me believe that when I left that damn shelter, I could do anything.

I want the kind of job where I can sit with people every day and say, "What is the impossible thing you would die to be able to do?" And then say, "For the love of everything you know, go do it. You can. And you will."

I believe in them. In you. Most days, I don't really care if I "make it." I mostly want everyone I know to make it first.

My first book manuscript is dark as hell. A lot of it is weepy and not very redemptive. But the more I read it, the more I realize what I'm really trying to say is...

"It's okay to have your horrible thoughts. I have those thoughts, too. Suffering will never go away. We might always, always hurt...

But look how beautiful we are."

ju[ic]ebox: her hair, tangled like a heap of treble clefs.

2010-05-27T22:49:00.000-04:00

i would hurt a fly [built to spill]
sister [sufjan stevens]
again and again [umbrellas]
my maudlin career [camera obscura]
virtute the cat explains her departure [the weakerthans]

Mice. That's a good reason to move.

2010-05-27T21:46:00.006-04:00

Was that first grade? Was it then that we moved because of mice? Birds. Third grade. Insufficient funds was second grade: we relocated from our tiny studio to my grandparents' basement in Arlington Heights.

I slept in a car once. No. Not once. Several times.

In fifth grade, we might have moved a total of 4 times. Five times? And the next year, we trucked from Illinois toward the Pacific Ocean. By then, I had learned to crave that chance to start over. To reinvent myself.

I moved every year of my life except during that hellish four-year chunk of high school. When I was in Illinois, I wanted California. I wanted that phantom TV-land of seagulls and palm trees.

And in California, I wanted out. I wanted to go to New York.

The first time I ran away, I was ten. The second time, I was sixteen. Then twenty-two. Twice at age twenty-two.

It wasn't until I moved to New York two years ago that I learned to call California "home." That was the first time I learned to miss a place. And miss people.

The other day, R said to me, "You put yourself out there as a person who always needs to get away and run off to new places. But you do this because that's what you're comfortable with. What you were born into. But deep down inside, you secretly want to stay in one place. And honey, it's okay to want that. If you want to go home, go home."

Tonight, after crying a little, job hunting, and disappearing into a few wrenching songs, I had the bright idea to reread every blog entry I wrote from May 2009 through September 2009.

I was in California during those months after my first year in New York.

Every entry from that period made it clear: I don't belong here. "Here" being... New York. "Here" being... away from the family--blood-related and not--who helped me grow into a functional, passionate human being.

I've met some amazing people on the east coast. People I will hold in my pockets for years and years to come. I'm sure I'll be back. Often.

But I want to go home now.

(Next step: Have the difficult conversations...)

"I have absolutely no blueprint,

2010-05-24T21:37:00.003-04:00

no real indication if this pain ever leaves.
But I know you are my default.
One ray of sunshine that lights this road
all the way home."

With that G-Vo song smashing through me on repeat, I just reread the poems that will make up my first book.

And it occurs to me now: When I say I'm staying in New York because it's the better career choice, I am absolutely deluded.

New York didn't feed those poems. Music did. Music, the language of angels. And angels did. And aside from my two poet mentors who taught me everything I know now about how to chisel my rants into poems, New Yorkers weren't the ones shredding, encouraging, and building my work ethic or my poems.

It was S, my dear friend. I let no one see raw drafts of my work besides S, who is a nurse. A nurse who lives in California. New York poetry readings and literary events didn't fuel my poems. The holy space in my bedroom did.

My acrylics and cheap canvases did.
My box of sentimental crap.
That fat Bible sitting beneath my alarm clock.
E-mails from Uganda, and Uganda itself.
The trip to Chicago, my grandfather's memorial.
Thin library books of poetry by people cloaked in death
and the love of pain.
Yes, so many books (like Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water.)
A sturdy kitchen table.
Blocking a specific phone number.
Dialing an 818 number more often.
Homemade cous cous dinners for one.
Drinking less.
A lot less.
Wi-Fi infused, hipster coffee shops.
Bands like Spoon, Imogen Heap, and Sparklehorse.
A picture I painted of an eyeball in the sky.
Hand-ripping rejection letters.
Internet podcasts of Michael Koh.
Weeping on the rooftop of my apartment building--
over and over again (and letting myself).

Being away from "home" gave me the permission I needed to write the sentences they told me never to write. Out of reach and mute, I pretended I was dead. Locked myself in. Quit all my jobs. Borrowed money. And wrote and wrote and wrote, clutching the hands of invisible helpers to maintain sanity.

And now, I can't stop. I'm a writer. A poet. I know this now.

It's in me. And I don't need to be away anymore.
But I might need my family. And by family, I mean the Pacific Ocean.
And not just my sisters, although... I think I need them, too.

I have a hefty decision to make.

"I felt you in my legs before I ever met you."

2010-05-16T23:03:00.000-04:00

One of the greatest, most human first lines ever.

"Nineteen" [Tegan & Sara].

"I bite my tongue every time I talk to you

2010-05-15T10:28:00.001-04:00

when you say or do something childish. Fuck. You need to find someone you trust and can trust and stop yourself. Your book is done and you ARE good and everything can happen for you. All of it, everything you want. You're the real deal. But THAT side of you can't come along.

Stop under valuing yourself. I've sabotaged myself pretty grandly, but I never met anyone who sells themself so short. Fuck. Sorry."

***

You're right. I know. And thanks.

Dreams.

2010-05-14T12:02:00.003-04:00

Purity.

And other underestimated, vague-ish, lofty words that mean so much if I strip myself of everything, close my eyes, and meditate on their definitions.

Faith.

And not "dreams," "purity," and "faith" the way our society has raped those words to mean kitschy feel-good copies of their origins.

Not "love," the way a mouth tastes.
Not "need," the hollow in your wallet.
Not "miracle," anything you've ever imagined.

The unimagined. "Purity" not by means of virginity or hand sanitizer. Pure-er. More pure.

***

We've unlearned how to desire the vague-ish and the lofty. Love is impossible, we've seen. Miracle, not even an acknowledged concept anymore. We're so ready to receive our crackberries and socially networked friends, pension plans and trips to Fiji, that we let this metallic, contemporary life overshadow what's really important.

I worked as a cigar girl yesterday. I know much too much about hand-rolled Maduro and Connecticut wrapped cigars (with Dominican binders, Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers, some with Cuban seed). I flirted and schmoozed my way around ritzy men exiting the famous steakhouse next door. I met someone who came from Sweden and went directly to that steakhouse.

Then there was a man who worked next door at a banking investment firm.

He was unhappy, I could tell, but he didn't say this.

He paced the sidewalk for a good hour, then came in to the bar. Sometimes, he sat outside and talked to me while he smoked his American Spirit cigarettes.

Later in the evening, a homeless man sat on the bench with him and asked him for advice. I only heard bits and pieces of their conversation.

Eventually, I heard the banking man shout:

"NO. None of that MATTERS. It's NOT 'who dies with the most toys wins.' It's not about the toys. It's about 'who dies with the most loved ones around them.' And I know this now. THAT'S what's important."

***

This morning, after three hours of sleep, my best friend phoned me, almost in tears, because she had an epiphany that will change her life. We talked about dreams. Miracles. Faith. Crazy things like that. Then, as I cleaned my room, I text-chatted with another one of my best friends, who talked about purity. Also, dreams. Also, miracles. It's all the same. Love.

All my life, I prayed for a family that wouldn't make me weep.

The earliest diaries/journals I have are from age 13.

They're filled with curse words and anger. And lots of prayer. Lots of begging. All I wanted were friends who could hold my life in their hands and say, "This is also my life. These are also my desires."

Thirteen years later, I am in tears because I've finally found that family.

Dear friends, you who are so deeply in my life--don't you see?--
you are my miracle.

Looks like I'm not invited to your wedding after all.

2010-05-09T23:52:00.001-04:00

I'm sincerely sorry for whatever I may have done to become a person your fiancée can't stand.

You were one of the most valuable friends I've ever known. You taught me how to be myself. My nostalgia for that friendship hurts like nothing I could ever explain.

But the bottom line is this: You appear--through my stalker sources--happier than I've ever known you to be. You've loved her since before I knew you. And she must adore you.

I'm sorry my feeble attempts to salvage our old friendship were not enough. But I never want to be the cause for any negative feelings in your fiancée. You--more than almost anybody I know--deserve that beautiful family you will have when you marry her this summer.

It makes me cry not to be able to say congratulations.

Congratulations. Really.

[I miss you (and everyone) so much.]

So I'm going to keep that Pedro the Lion EP I borrowed from you years ago. Yeah. You're never getting that back, J-----. :) Live your adventurous life, brotherman. "Peace in."

Whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh oh ohhh

2010-05-06T03:05:00.024-04:00

You are an okay lover, you are an okay loverrrr...

__________

Some friends think I am a textbook Christian chick. Others send me actual e-mails because they believe I used to be the holy poster child, but have since gone off my rocker and now need fresh saving.

Some friends call me the alcoholic. Or former alkie. Or whatever. God aside. Then, we've got others who think I'm not very partial to anything "church." I am the friend they approach to try out new anti-God jokes. Because I get the references. And I laugh.

Sometimes, I'm the friend they ask for real, out-loud prayer.

Sometimes, I'm the friend they confide in when a creeper tries to proselytize to them with that small yellow pamphlet with diagrams of bridges and hell.

Some friends think I believe in a hell. Some think I don't.

Some think it's incredibly important that I sort out what all my friends think and set a clear record. That I should have a one-word answer when Facebook demands my "religious views." Others simply don't care.

Do I care?

This much is true: I never pretend to have any answers.

The friends closest to me--the blood friends--the die-for-you friends--know that everything I do know generally looks like this poem.

They know that this poem might be about Jesus. And it might be about a man. Or it might be about Jesus who is a man. Or none of the above--because they know this poem is really about the speaker.

The "me."

The violence, the hesitance, the sadness, and that gray slip of hope that exists in every relationship--whether the relationship is between a man and a woman or between a human and the thing she prays to.

And the music in everything.

Yeah. The music. Oh God, the music.

The Universe in action:

2010-05-04T13:21:00.001-04:00

I don't trek up to school on Tuesdays. But today, I was called in to schlep around an incoming poetry student on a specialty tour. I don't even know the names of the buildings. But I love my school. And my school likes to capitalize on my love of school.

So I traveled two hours to get there.

And the kid never showed up.

I waited for a bit. I lounged in the Slonim Living Room with a sci-fi novel. I eavesdropped on a fiction writing class. Somebody said, "I thought she was a prostitute!" Somebody else said, "But why did he shoot the gun?"

Then the man-in-the-office showed up with a gorgeous woman. Not a poet. A woman interested in the health advocacy program. The man-in-the-office said, "Sorry the poet kid never showed up. Why not show around health-advocacy-lady instead?"

So I did.

Then the following words tumbled out of this woman's mouth: "Domestic violence." "Mental illness." "Suicide." Plus progressive politics and revolutionary health advocacy stances to go with each of those words.

Jackpot. This woman automatically shifted into my "Beautiful Angel Woman" category--the category reserved for people like my mother and my thesis advisor.

Behind her perfectly applied makeup and teal blouse, I heard the story of a strong, driven woman who had just lost her husband. She told her story with a smile.

Naturally, I unleashed the Cliff's Notes version of my family history. She knew I knew she'd understand. I painted her a small, beautiful picture of my mother. They'd be great friends.

It later turned out that this woman's son is interested in Tae Kwon Do! That's when the coincidences got eerier and I told her about my mom's new Tae Kwon Do studio. [The woman was thrilled to hear my mother had remarried.]

We exchanged e-mails and phone numbers.

We hugged.

And the woman and I exchanged that look--when you know your encounter wasn't a coincidence.

I wonder why I met her. And when the universe will bring us together again.

I cry about the stupidest things.

2010-04-27T02:13:00.003-04:00

I wish I could remember the kinds of things I thought and said and did when I was 8. [I wish my parents could remember.]

All I remember from 1992 is a dream. I think I say that on page 5.

Picture a Malaysian guy with a mad-scientist accent

2010-04-27T01:01:00.005-04:00

preaching this to a small, awkward-ish congregation of some of America's most progressive and least superficial people [yes, apparently, some of those people do attend a church.. this one in particular..]:

* * *

Now on to verse 5: "By awesome deeds, you answer us with deliverance." "By awesome deeds, you answer us with deliverance, Oh God of our salvation. You are the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the furthest seas."

Now here's my question: Can we really believe this? That God, in verse 5, says that he answers us with awesome deeds.

When is the last time you experienced an awesome deed by which God answers?

And I don't want you to sort of think of something that's not very awesome and just make it into something awesome. No. I don't mean that. You don't have to help God in that way.

If a thing is awesome, it's awesome. If it's not, you don't have to pock it up until it becomes sort of awesome. And I don't mean awesome in the way we tend to say everything's awesome.

No. He says, "By awesome deeds, you answer us with deliverance." I want to be satisfied with this. This desire. This promise. That he can answer me with awesome deeds.

I want to see whether God really answers me with awesome deeds. If God is a God of awesome deeds, then I want him to answer me. I want him to answer my need with awesome deeds.

I don't want to give excuses for God. I do not want to live a life in which everything has been flattened out into some kind of religion in which I sort of try to appreciate all the little, little, little, little, little things and talk it up into something that it is not--that they are not. Does that make sense?

I don't want to be oversensitive to the extent of distortion.

I don't believe in that. I can't. It's not enough for me.

* * *

I listened to the whole thing. ...Makes you wonder......

ju[ic]ebox: mercury in retrograde, rain, and blood, and rain and rain.

2010-04-25T22:20:00.000-04:00

juicebox [the strokes]
satellite heart [anya marina]
strange terrain [circa survive]
if you want me to [ginny owens]
starring [freelance whales]

Mind gone. Don't pay too much attention to this:

2010-04-25T18:30:00.070-04:00

* Down, Bianca1. Down. You. dumb. cunt.
* "Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing." - Sylvia Plath.
* Spring cleaning: Chuck everything to the ground; lie naked on top.
* I'm thisclose to crawling to Los Angeles from Brooklyn. With a bag full of books and tampons.
* Don't watch Requiem for a Dream before bed.
* Last night, I dreamt I was a prostitute. I need a job.

* "You will eat your young and you will act surprised." - Brand New.
* M&Ms. Hot dogs topped with kimchi. Rhubarb shaved ice. Papa John's. Queso con salsa. A thousand 5-hr energies. Must detox.
* I wish I had my car to swerve.
* I wish I had bubble wrap.
* Sometimes, I still wake up in the middle of the night screaming at him.
* A small devil in a flowerpot really does live in my closet. I mean, small woman. In the poem, I said woman.

* The only time I ever did [blank], I threw up in a sink and passed out.
* I want to throw up in a sink and pass out. I didn't just wake up on the wrong side of bed. I woke up bleeding through its broken slats.
* "Is my timing that flawed?" - Joy Division.
* I'd give anything for a hot air balloon ride.
* Recurring vision: I step through that gate, meet God, he slaps me across the face. Says, "I let you up here just so I could tell you that the way you wrote me down in your books is childish. Disgusting."
* I often think heaven is my idea of hell.

* I lied. Not naked. I'm sprawled on top of my things in a sweater. Granny jeans.
* THIS is art: Hot damn, I want the second one stretched across my wall.
* My boyfriend is the first guy interested in me who doesn't stalk me [my blog/s]. This makes me queasy. But I don't tell him that. I tell you.
* He's also the first one I've never seen cry. I don't know how to make him cry.
* "...her upper lip like the line children draw to represent a bird in flight." - William Gibson.
* Once, I accidentally microwaved my heart.

1 Bianca is the name I gave the inner bitch who controlled me from late 2006 to early 2008. We haven't fully figured out how to exorcise her. I simply medicate her with chocolates and give her a rug to sleep beneath.

Today, I got this text from my mom:

2010-04-21T20:01:00.001-04:00

"Hey baby why don't you write a poem for God? Something like thanking him, how his creation is so beautiful?"

I love my mom. Her text made me laugh a little.

I don't have the heart to tell her what fucked up things I really say about God.. and about "creation."

Ironically enough, today, my workshop went over one of my poems in which my--I mean, the speaker's--mom actually says, "God is good."

My class decided that the speaker doesn't believe her mom. And they all agreed that they don't care whether the speaker believes in a good God. What matters is that, in this poem, the mom believes. And we like that she believes--even if the speaker can't understand that faith. We also like that the speaker is tortured. Unresolved. Even by the end of that poem.

The faith my mom has is unreachable for some of us. Most of us.

I will always have questions. Always always always always always.

But I believe God is real and gorgeous for people like my mom. And that's enough to keep me asking, not ignoring. Digging, not giving up. I mean, if he's as great as they say he is, why the fuck not?

Why not look and look for him until I collapse, bloody, from all that digging?

Show yourself, Mister. =) You know I'm always listening.