i do my best not to think about anything at all

december 11, 2013

alone again on one of the coldest nights in december. at least the heat works tonight. i do my best not to think about anything at all…but there are so many thoughts. i'm listening to a song i love that his friend wrote. maybe one day i'll meet this tony flaggs that wants to play for a linda, because then it would mean he's 'made it'.

i came home and opened my heart today. i opened it so much it burst into tiny little rainbow glitter and blanketed my floor and got into my ears. it feels like for so long my heart was locked up, so slowly each day i work to chisel the lock until i can one day love again. danny says it feels close and it will be amazing. i believe him because he's right about a lot of things and because i love him. you believe the people you love. you let them tell you things, like how beautiful you are and all you can do is believe them. this is nice.

sometimes, on strange days you decide not to believe them. then things become foreign, they become a stranger. the distance between you suddenly explodes like a bomb. you see them in the distance getting further and further and you want to let go. they reach out for a moment and you back away even further until the next thing you know you are running down that long corridor underground. when you get away you think that you are free but then you realize that it was all a dream. love is the only reality.

this time, unlike all the other times, you run back down that long cold corridor because if you run fast enough you can literally jump out of the dream.

sometimes when i walk or am just standing around, i stomp on the ground to make sure it's really there. in dreams, you can stomp on the ground and be transported to another dream. in reality, your foot just tingles.

christmas: post apocalypse 2012

we survived the apocalypse that was a lie to begin with. i know now that i write this we will all die in flames. i'm sorry humanity. i'm also just kidding.
today i woke up alone with my dog at my feet in an apartment that isn't mine. i'm stranded, by choice, so i'm told by the loving roommate that kicked me out. yes, i will stick to my story, knowing that there is always two sides to a coin. all is forgiven, but still...my car is full of my belongings that i wish i could toss over a bridge and watch scatter over the ocean and never think again about anything that was lost. but then i'd be polluting.
i have one last night at where i am staying, where i am grateful, to be able to do yoga and meditate again, alone, and in a peaceful place. then where? i hate to burden anyone now, especially after what i just went through. i am an intruder. people need their space. people require their space. don't enter their ora or else, you will be homeless. that's my lesson, unfortunately. another lesson i realized is that no matter what you say to someone or how earnestly you implore understanding, people will hear only the story they want. and i am no exception. i am human. i get angry, hungry, jealous, not so much greedy (only when there is only one orange skittle left in a bag that i'm sharing with someone else who also loves orange skittles; true story)
taste that fucking rainbow darlin'.
so today, i'm alone in someone else's apartment typing this lame story to myself. merry christmas rainbow. we all love you. we all adore you. we all need you.
the worst part of this love story is that i need all of you too. i love all of you. i adore all of you. i'm only still here because of all of the love that has been bestowed upon me by all of you.
i know i am not perfect. i extremely dislike lizards. i make more mistakes than the average person. i hurt more people than should be allowed by the police department. but know, i never mean to. there is no bad intention in my body towards anyone else. the only hurt comes from within which unfortunately radiates out at times and for this, i'm sorry world. i am my own kryptonite.
all i ever want to hear is "I love you, Rainbow." now you know, the voices in my head, they are real.

grandma

i arrived at home and ran straight for her. i saw into her eyes and fell down to hold her. she said my name and the family was all surprised she knew who i was. they said she's been loosing her mind slowly and most times she doesn't know who anyone is. she knew me. i am her soulmate.

all day i laid next to her, on the floor. she can't walk or get up into bed so we live our lives around her, on the floor in the living room.

that night i woke up to her banging on the front door, asking someone, a man, to open it. she was not in this world. she was talking to someone somewhere else. but she was not crazy. she was just somewhere else. but they wouldn't let her in yet so i had to go pick her up off the floor and carry her back to bed. i held her for as long as it took to fall asleep again.

today i got to bathe her for the first time in my life and all i could think about was when i had to bath my mother every day for months. i didn't let it make me sad. i stayed in each moment, pouring water over her half naked body (cambodian people still shower outside but with a sarong on), shampooing her hair and scrubbing her legs, arms and back. the most amazing part was when i looked over at my family watching me, grandma was laugh and joking like her usual self and i was kissing her head, and they were speechless. they said she has refused to bathe for days and whenever they do bathe her she kicks and screams. so today, it was a happy experience. then my family, one by one, helped washed parts of her body most western families would hire a nurse to do at this point. we dried her and dressed her and she was happy all day. now i watch her sleep as i type this to remember that perfect moment.

tiny ants and rainbow glitter

my heart literally hurts. i'm having trouble breathing. day two of an entirely breaking heart. day three of a new york city heatwave. madness. heat. madness. the pressure is great and my body is so small that it should have burst into tiny little particles blanketing the earth with rainbow glitter. but i'm still here, pressurizing like a pot of rice. rice because i'm asian. i accept it all, breathe it all in no matter how difficult life becomes. i'm doing push ups in my mind, taping up my heart and filling in the holes in my head. once in a while another storm comes breaking me down. i rebuild, again and again. each time, i learn a new task, a new way to rebuild with new tools and each time it's a new house, similar to the old house but different, better, stronger.
i walked around the city today in the rain under an umbrella of cats. rain like monsoon rain so beautiful and scary like it was the end of the world. i watched people like ants. ants like people. people need identification and purpose. ants already have that. they are ants, they eat stuff and process it out their funny bums (and pretty quickly one would guess). then ants just build their homes all day, carrying leaves and dirt to and fro, all day. maybe ants do more things i don't know about, like go swimming or have dinner parties with other bugs.
alone in my room, the train just ten feet outside my window and people talking, experiencing their friday night. this is my friday night. i am a lucky little girl. i am happy and free. i have amazing human connections. i eat really really well and  have money to buy things i fancy like lavender bitters, indian spices, two slices of cheesecake i'll save for later and a carrot cake i eat while walking down park avenue in new york city. i stop to buy sparkling mineral water and add my lavender bitters to it. i ride home stopping to observe human interaction, say hello's and listen to struggles. i continue home to brooklyn, singing to no one but me.

it's snowing in brooklyn

sometime in january, 2012. our first snow of the year. it's 3:39am. i just got home from a birthday party, but not just any birthday party, frank's birthday party, at brooklyn fireproof. they played an awesome set. he was happy. we were all happy. i think about how magical everyone's lives are that are constantly spinning around us and then i think about how lucky we are. we are young. we dance. they play music to a crowd that dances around them and sings along to their songs. no one seems to have a worry in their heart (except for one girl, but that's another story). we all just dance. hair and heads whip around me. everyone is dancing. i look back. where did everyone come from? the room is full and people are just dancing. this is my life. and my life is amazing.

now, at home sitting in my living room, typing, staring at snow coming down onto the patio outside the sliding glass door. it reminds me of a gus van sant movie. the sky is tinted orange. it's not dark out, just a dimly lit room somewhere in the middle of nowhere and the sky has no end, no ceiling. snow lays silently on the metal screen door. it's getting whiter and whiter and finally seems to pile up enough that the poop on the patio is almost covered up, like we never had poop on our patio.

bushwick sleeps quietly. tonight was exceptionally quiet. not many people on the rode. but then again, it's really cold out.

if life ends this  year, then i must make this year count.

i'm tired and realized it's almost 4am. i must go to sleep.

sunday feb 21 2010

over two and a half years living in new york city, more specifically brooklyn and it's finally starting to become home. i'm not sure when this happened but all of a sudden i wake up and realize how much brooklyn feels like home. i can't begin to describe all the scary exciting fantastical events that have happened since i moved to new york on july 17, 2007 (yes, i remember the exact date!). it's been a roller-coaster ride that could have ended tragically but luckily took a turn for the better and here i am to write about all of it. maybe, eventually, i can say it's the start of a book. maybe, more realistically, just the start of a blog to add to the gadzillions of blogs already floating around in cyberspace.

this past friday, february 19th was our health inspection with the nyc department of health and mental hygiene. sounds very official doesn't it? well, it was and finally we get the official stamp of approval to open our doors to real live (hopefully paying) customers. little skips, the physical location, has been a long time in the making. blood, sweat and tears are just a little of what went into getting this place ready to open. it's like a huge boulder has been lifted off my shoulders. friday was surreal. i massed texted everyone after the inspectors left, shook my hand and said in reply to my 'when can i open?", "you can open right now." henry jumps for joy and half jokingly runs in circles to find something to sell. maria-diana ends up being the almost first customer by buying a nasty cup of maxwell house home styled brewed coffee. she said she wanted to be officially the first paying customer. that she gets the title. those maxwell house coffee from family dollar days are gone now. our shiny La Marzocco espresso machine gets installed monday by the technically talented tommy gallagher at counter culture coffee who so happens to live in the neighborhood. i talked to the guy from launch stalker today and we are posted on his blog site.

friday ended up as a nice celebration day. it started by being taken to lunch. i ate at life cafe with maria-diana, chris and josh mccutchen. i treated myself to the life burger, medium with lots of katsup. mitch and mollie stoped by after and brought me flowers and frambois. ohhow they sound perfectly matched like you should always have flowers with frambois. dalton was next to stop by to help with designing our logo. i got faith in this one. the logo feels close. now we just sit tight and wait for the first binary encrypted draft of our logo. i guess my doodling and hand drawn creatures weren't making the cut according to henry. he's right. this is not my forte.

later, henry's friends came by, both named adrian, which i dont' know if i'm spelling it right because i think it's one of those names that can have at least 8 or 9 spellings. one adrian is going to do an art piece on a couple walls in little skips. we discussed. adrain got on a ladder and commenced doodling with a mechanical pencil he just got from family dollar after he refused henry's more official fancy drawing pencils he probably got from the craftsupply store.

finally, the little skips family showed up for the grande finale. i had a lot of fun just 'staying in' on a friday night at little skips.