!

a sigh of relief and profound happiness.

shoes

i find skater shoes to be unattractive in men who are within my dating range. indeed, i can look at you and think: YOWZA! HOT-TA-TA! look at your shoes (something i have been doing lately, don't ask why), see that they're skater shoes and be immediately uninterested.

only exception: if you are a professional skater. tony hawke, you are welcome to date me at any time.

so men of the world, grow up and get big boy shoes; i'd apprecaite it.

happy birthday

source: man charged with strangling seattle teen on church trip

wilted and blooms

petals naturally fall away with time.

wilted and expired, they precariously dangle by an organic thread,
soon a deathly drop: to endure the fall is inconsequential.

seething with survival, gasping to unfurl anew
they terminate in a public grave of fragrant, crumpled corpses.

a naked core wavers on a slim stalk, a rapunzel
strong, submerged, trapped in its glass tower.

but resurrection!

timed care and strategic nourishment allows new life;
souls without a past are invited to scale the slick, beveled walls.

they are handpicked soldiers, not privy to the history,
an amalgation of old habits and new talents

replacing the core with revived color:
a bloom reinvented, a transformed organism.

and these petals, as do all the others, will naturally fall away with time.

walls

mm...mm, i LOVE walls.

big walls, little walls.

long walls, short walls.

stucco walls, white walls, black walls.

reinforced walls and concrete walls.

walls of china, berlin wall, wallpaper even.

i am a builder of walls.

BONZAI! (<--this serves no purpose)

disappointed

i am easily disappointed in people.
i am easily disappointed by life.

i look at the world and i see a crummy place.
i see something that i want to fix, but i'm too small and the world is too big.

i see a lack of basic consideration.

people who don't care about how this world barely survives day by day.
or be bothered to muster enough care for the people around them.

it takes so little to create so much happiness,
so why is the world sinking in its own sadness?

and then again, there are the little surprises.

the people who emerge from this fog, who warm my heart and give me hope.
who know how to care and show it

they give me hope that the world can change
that we are small in our individuality, but large in our collective efforts

morning mourning

i am moved to tears every morning when i read the news:

serbian court convicts 4 for sbrebrenica massacre

somali clan says 1,086 killed

suicide plagues natives

dear paul

dear paul bishop with an arizona driver's license:

you wrote me a bad check this afternoon.

this is after you took advantage of the all you can eat buffet.

this is after you made yourself comfortable in a booth, hunkered down into a snore and disturbed the peace of those who had the money to eat.

i understand that you can't afford the nine dollars it costs to eat all the lunch that you can eat.

i get that you're probably homeless, need to think about putting your dollars toward your next drink and were just hungry.

i'm sorry that i couldn't let you sleep at our restaurant. the way your head bobbed was a lawsuit waiting to happen. what if you lost control of your neck during your deep slumber and broke your head against the tabletop? sweet and sour sauce can't be good for brain tissue.

but what makes me mad is that you didn't think about me.

you didn't think that your nine dollar check would bounce and incur a twenty five dollar fee. that we're just a one-restaurant small family establishment. and that we're asian and living so beyond our means as our culture dictates that we're in a precarious situation.

okay, not really. but we could be.

so paul bishop, next time just shrug your shoulders and say "hell, i could give you a check, but it'd just bounce. i'm sorry" and just walk the hell out.

monumental seconds

pet peeve: misspelled words.

right now: open mike at Kodiak. live music makes me emotional.

tomorrow: a first date.

yesterday: the devil has fled the house, but where has all the holiness gone to? i hate seeing my mom this sad.

le car

some time between noon and 1:45 PM yesterday afternoon someone hit my car and drove off.

if you know me, you know that i love my car.

i mean...i love that car.

love.

l. o. v. e.

love.

i couldn't even be angry, i was just sad. my poor car shiny, bought in november car...now you're ugly.

it's okay, i still love you.

resisting a premonition

i had a premonition some time ago that my life would not be "normal" for quite some time.

that somewhere along the way, i had tipped the event that would begin this new life. i like to pinpoint it to april 2006--but really, it had to be building up long before then.

while i wasn't sure at the time whether i would eventually welcome change...i accepted it. admittedly, a part of me was waiting for it to be over because among the incredibly awesome experiences, there were the unbearably bad.

i said to a friend several months ago that there was so much i wanted to tell him, but how i couldn't. that i had a feeling that "this" was all the beginning of an awesome life that i could not possibly imagine. that i could ride this wave or let it sweep my feet from under me.

the bad has been bad, but if i look ahead i can see where it is beneficial. the lessons that i've learned and how they will be valuable for this new life ahead.

thing is, i realized lately that i had been resisting this change. and resisting change is neither riding the wave or letting it sweep my feet from under me. it's as futile as standing on the shore before a tsunami, hands outstretched in front of me, and in a booming god-like voice saying: "STOP BECAUSE I SAY SO."

that just doesn't work.

at least when i let the wave sweep my feet from under me, i can roll with the punches. i'll end up all wet, but still be able to pick myself back up, shake off some of the wet and give it another go.

so here's to a new realization. a greater sense of acceptance of life as it is and has been. i've changed in so many ways in the last year, but in the end i'm still me. you might disagree. but hell, i don't care.

fuck yes.

self-direction

i never knew growing up could be so hard.

too many decisions and too many feelings to consider.

but they're not my decisions.
they're not my feelings that i must consider.

stop.

take a breath.

consciously slow the blood flow,
maximize each beat of the heart.

i need to admit that it's time to be selfish.

and that there is nothing wrong with that.

period. exclamation mark. exclamation mark.

fleeting thought.

7:58 PM: I feel lost.

stay put and you wll be found.

i'm going to start a project.

i need a polaroid camera and a mini tape recorder.

i'm sitting in a gay bar, drinking a beer and doing homework while watching planet earth on the discovery channel.