the shorter story

Things are tentative, and it's been a sad year. Or at least that's what the calendar says. Where did all that time go, mapping out the future, darting around the present: shifting, worrying, letting things go. Letting days turn to days, as if days were just days and nothing more.

--

Things that scare me:

(at the moment,) myself

(and as always,) the uncertainty of the future. Not having something to do with my hands

(and at the moment,)

, or any of my limbs, now that I think about it. Not having prepared adequately for the present, at least not this present, one that, at this point, is largely a museum (shockingly undusty) anyway. Leftovers from another lifetime. Things I've lost, resurfacing in daydreams.

oh, shit.

The things lost, not even countable. Not quantifiable, cannot be communicated. A whole life.

What I want: to be someone who is comfortable having everything.

Because I know I can have it, if I want it

Instead, what I am: someone who is comfortable only having nothing.

and I have it, because i want it.

I can't be so surprised.

How can you expect to build something when you only know self-destruction?

How can you build a home when all you know how to do is leave?

And who will you allow to be there when it finally gets hard, when you're only the shadow of a persona?

But just because it's not surprising, that doesn't mean it isn't sad.

I've never really just

listened

to someone cry. I've never just received someone's feelings. I don't know if I've given them in a way that's real.

Always the same: rationality, logistics. F e e l b e t t e r s o o n feelbettersooner.

These things are easy, yeah, everyone loves easy things. But these things aren't honest.

My life's been simple before, yeah, everyone loves a simple life. But this life hasn't been honest. This life hasn't been intimate. This body has been dependable, but the person who lives in it hasn't. I don't want to feel fine, because things aren't fine. It's as simple as that. Alone now, I answer only to myself. This can go one of two ways:

1) The way it always goes

2) The way it's going to go this time

It's time, finally, to grow up. What better time than the present. What better time to do something hard than when things are already so hard. Why bother to go easy on myself, when, all this time, life's been going so easy on me, and here I've been, just along for the ride.

But this is not a ride. This is real. No longer a game of winning or losing. This is decisions. These are ramifications. What you do is consequential. WHAT YOU DO IS CONSEQUENTIAL. What you do is consequential and this life is yours and what you do is yours and who you love is yours not to own but to care for and if you don't own up to these things, then these things will disappear from you, life will continue to happen to you, you will live, or you won't, but most likely you will live, you will live even if you hate it, and you will live because if you don't, then these grains, all these grains that were once so individually small, they will sift and switch and slip through your fingers and will never slip back, they will never un-fall, because

gravity

still

exists

, and suddenly - so suddenly - there is nothing in your hands.

--

I miss the future, the infinite possibilities, and I miss believing that things are good and that i am good and that it was so simple to live int he present tense, even though things are never really simple at all,

except for re-attaching laptop keys or taking out the recycling.

And the tragedy of growing up seems to be that growing up is only a tragedy.

And the truth is that the truth is maddening.

And in the tallest, widest windows - windows so large that they are only the dark - I catch glimpses of ghosts. But, no, it's only the light off the computer casting itself onto me in a reflection.

Just me, and I didn't want to lie anymore, so I told the truth.

And the truth was maddening.
Because I forgot - or i didn't consider - that it's not about the lies we don't tell, but about the things we do or don't do so that no one has to build their reality around them.

I Have a Chronic Need to Explain Myself

1. Tonight is my last night in the Philippines. I will miss Biblical flooding and laying on the bed being too hot to move and being too shy to speak too much in public and getting drunk in my grandma's house after she insists that I eat lasagna.
2. Last night was my second to last night in the Philippines, and it was wonderful, and it reminded me feel that I have a lot to come back for.
3. There are gays here. As a general statement, they're cute and always willing to talk to my drunk ass.
4. Have you received your postcard yet? Well that's because I didn't send it. Here's a preview!

For anyone who doesn't know about Katrina 'Asian' Casino Postcard Project 2009, here's a brief explanation.

A couple of days before I left, I collected addresses of people who wanted postcards (this part is relatively straightforward). Now, I was going to write you all personalized rap songs, but as I have a tendency to always insist on being embarrassingly honest, I decided to put a spin on it (the postcard project, not the rap songs. That could come later though). I collected the names, and drawing them at random, assigned the recipients to one another. I also threw in some extra people who I haven't been talking to/didn't ask for a postcard. Just for funsies. And because I didn't have any dark secrets to reveal to some people. Everyone who's receiving a postcard is receiving a confession, secret, or general pointless rambling/crazytalk to another person. Just something I've never told them because I'm too awkward or shy or lazy or I have social tact or something (this is a lie, I have no social tact). Each postcard begins with "You don't know this, but" and then continues on to whatever one-sided conversation I wanted to have. I feel like this post is going to turn into some absurd Filipino post-secret ripoff, but sometimes that's just how it is.















Also I tried to get the tackiest postcards available.
Also I'm a really poor planner, and these will probably be mailed from New York.

So without further ado, I bring you a series of really serious statements followed by really hilarious pictures.

---------------------------------------------
You don't know this, but...

Sometimes I get a little scared that we'll never be who we were on that first night.

You're one of my favorites, but I'll never admit this to you because I'll always be too afraid to hear I'm not one of yours.

Everyone knows it's always been about you.

And I don't know if you'll ever believe it, but I'm fine.
(The rice paddies that my ancestors slaved on so that I'd never have to wear sunscreen in the summers)

Once I was lurking your Facebook page, and I accidentally liked one of your wall posts, then freaked out because I was way too high to figure out that I could unlike it.
(Alternatively: Meeting you was like meeting myself.)
(Fuck yeah, tigers!)

You and I both need to calm the fuck down.

I'm fully aware that all I really do is break promises to you.

You're the reason I question anything at all.
(Am I the only one who finds proud eagles of all nationalities to be hilarious?)

You're the reason for the flowers in my hair.

Every action that has defined our relationship has also perfectly and explicitly conveyed my deepest personality flaws in a way that I never could have anticipated or expressed.

When I was younger and thought that I wanted to get married and thought that I wanted to get married to a man, that man I pictured was just like you.
(Mabuhay a las Filipinas! We sell slippers, brooms, fans, and...wedding cakes made out of beads?)

Sometimes I find you to be so unbelievably plain that I can't help but find you irresistibly attractive.
(Hello, favorite.)

Though you probably do, I should have kissed you right when I had you.

I love you...not like that, not really, anyway.
(I don't know if I just haven't been paying attention, but I have never fucking seen one of these.)

I'm really sorry we didn't get to talk in the brief time we were together, that time we existed in 3D.
(I have no idea why I don't own one of these hats yet.)

I wasn't even really sure if I liked you until recently.

I think you're really beautiful.

You should stick around.
(Hi, drag show this year plz?)

You're a little boring, but you're so so sincere, and I guess that's okay.

You might well be the reason I don't regret coming home this summer.

(I ran out of photos/postcards, so here's a picture of me getting attacked by a crab at my grandma's house.)

This postcard was discarded because I couldn't verify its truth:

I'D LIKE TO KNOW what you think of this. What you think of that, that thing I just said. I'd like to know if you knew, and if you knew then when you knew and why you haven't said anything, and come to think of it, why I haven't said anything either, but I suppose that's not for you to answer. I'd like a lot of things. I'd like hot nights with rolled down windows and loud music. I want to sing along. I'd like questions without answers and open ends and true belief in possibility. I'd like the fifty-yard line. I'd like a deluge, a rainstorm, silencing the world outside my car; I'd like to drive with no headlights. I'd like to know the corner of your jawline and what it feels like to thread my fingers through your beltloops. I'd like the rooftop where I learned to smoke and sneak and eventually not get caught. I'd like my hometown nostalgia. Fuck, I'd like any nostalgia.

And I don't know if you know this, but when I'm gone, I miss you the most.

Things I UnLearned in College

This was going to originally be a finals week rant about how frustrated and exhausted and pressed for time I was. But somewhere along the line I changed my mind. It may have been at midnight on the seemingly inaccessible patio on which, only six floors up, I could view the entire school, silent, consumed by their books, while I exhaled and watched cigarette smoke float through the still, humid air over the top of my Red Bull (the two have been a strangely familiar but not unwelcome combination from high school) as I prepared for one more caffeine-soaked evening devoted to conquering the evils of microeconomics. It also may have been six-and-a-half hours later, when, dazed but bright-eyed, I emerged onto the quad to find the air as still as ever and witness a few individuals milling about under the newly grey sky.

Or maybe it was just that substance-induced sleep in the amphitheater the other night. Who knows.
The point is that I realized that all this stress and pressure and unhappy-making nonsense was just that: nonsense that a series of events and places and people socialized me to believe were necessary to a generic, synthesized form of happiness and normalcy. And that, as much as I've learned in my first year of college, the things that I've unlearned are just as, if not more, important in deconstructing everything that I had assumed I wanted.

So here we go.

They told me I had to be a business major because that's how you make money, and money buys you success, and this success makes you happy. Money makes you happy because you're always entitled to new things, such as a new wardrobe each season bought from the nearest mall with the money you've been earning at that dead-end minimum-wage suburban-kid job. But you know you're happy because why else would you keep trying to earn money to buy things? You still want it, really, you do.

To be a woman, they said, your hair must fall at least to your shoulders, and you must use it to lure men. This and your feminine wiles. Failing at either of these disqualifies you as a real woman, and you'll never be beautiful. For that you must be ashamed and scared and spend your time shielding yourself behind another person.

And yes, you do need another person to make you complete. You can't do this by yourself because if you're not in love, then you're not happy, and if marriage and children aren't in your future, then you're not normal (did you ever notice that everyone you talk to is mysteriously and definitely married when they talk about their futures? What makes that a given?). If you blew it the first time you loved, then you'll never find it again, and you probably didn't deserve it in the first place, so you have to go and ruin everything you touch because it'll never be the same anyway.

Pants are necessary around others.
So are shoes.
And you can't get there if a pair of wheels won't take you.

Carrying all this shit around, it's no wonder everyone is so damn unhappy.
The problem is where to go from here.

I think I'm going to spend the summer (when not flipping burgers and fending off angry pool moms) alone on buses, wandering through cities, bumming around friends' places, losing myself (though not really getting lost, because that's terrifying) in the woods, reading, reading, reading, hearing other people's stories and making my own.

Company is always welcome.

I Will

go to class this week.

I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.
I will go to class this week.

It is entirely possible that I've reached my breaking point.
Last week was lost in a cloud of smoke, and I subsequently attended half the amount of classes that I missed. Big college fail. I had a great week and don't necessarily regret it, but, really, I need to start going to class.

Actual post later today. Just thought if I put this out there, it might really happen.

PS - Download "Hysteric" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

PPS- A lesson in vocab...
transportered (tr v.) - to be transported from Porter house. Usually superior to an on-campus transport because 1. there is no ambulance, 2. "transporter" is more difficult for drunk students to chant than "transport," 3. you managed to make it off-campus before actually getting that drunk

highde-and-go-seek (n) - 1. as a game, very clearly the worst idea ever
2. as an accidental game, getting lost and refusing to tell anyone where you are and instead insisting that they search campus to come find you