dramatics and shields, revisited

I think I am melodramatic. (Or can anyone be melodramatic when it comes to feelings? After all, you feel what you feel. Should the mind ever try to rein in the intensity of the heart--with all its foolishness?)

After an exchange, I am reverted back to the familiar scene painted by Amy Tan, the daughter putting up her castle of defenses, only to realize her perceived opponent is waiting outside, weapons nowhere in sight.

What are the shields for then? These defenses one puts up around themselves. Whether it be their own achievements or relationships with others, is it a product of external forces or of one's own folly?

It's an odd tactic, trying to escape outside myself.

**

house of cards

Again, I must come back here with yet another entry about you. They almost feel repetitive now, or at least predictable. Every quarter or so, I come back, and the first inevitable blow sends me off the ground, suspended and floating backwards, because, unlike the rational outsider, I never seem to be prepared for such apocalypses.

These little insinuations, or "guesses", as you call them. What are they for? Except to tear away at me little by little, so that everything I've built myself--everything I thought were real and unmovable (even by you)--seem like a house of cards, crumpling down with your careless little blow of air. A merciless smirk lurking around your blood red lips.

Do I seem melodramatic? Very well then, I am melodramatic.

**

emerald shield

For the first time in my life, I think maybe what I have isn't enough. This is such a revelation to me that I hardly know how to respond to it. Except, instinctively, the green-eyed creature wells inside me, and it takes all my shamed efforts to quell it.

Maybe it's not so bad a thing. Without the Machiavellian nymph, insidiously weaving vines about me, what other monster could take over? Self-defeat? Certainly Envy, with all her baggage and reputations, is also what keeps us afloat.

**

bridges and tricks

After so much time has passed, I come back to you almost accidentally. I can't believe I'm still not completely over it. A simple song sends me flying here, a song that exists not as a bridge between you and me, but rather a reminder of the fact that the bridge could never be.

Besides you, I also miss him. I have a lot of questions that are unanswered, and he continues to remain an enigma. Right now, it looks like I will never know. Perhaps it's better that way anyway, anytime a trick is revealed, the magic no longer seems real. The illusion is almost always better than the real thing.

"Those in the know lead the worst sort of lives", the ignorant tell ourselves.

**

semantics

In response to the last, it has never happened as of now, because you won't even look at me, or pretend to. (Though how could you have pretended to?) However, I have no real feelings about it now (like I had none to the first snowflakes that drifted today, sparse and listless). It can be the project of the future (I've given up the possibility of treating it as nonconsequential, everything to me has too much consequence. I've decided I can't (or won't) change that as for now. Just like how you said you won't about you, because you're too (since you think age is an acceptable criteria for this) young.

**

sense transgressions

You know what I want? I want to look at you in silence. And when I say something to myself, I will swear you heard it too. I want to make these demands with my eyes and you to grant them with yours. I want the intensity to overwhelm me, so encompassing that it becomes tangible, yet visible only to me. I want it to only be real for us, but more real than anything ever felt. I want the moment to stretch into eternity.

Soundlessly, I will say: look at me.

And you will.

**

the ostrich method

Should we ever apologize for the past? Australia has apologized for its history of child abuse, while the Japanese prime minister has refused to apologize for the torture of Chinese citizens during WWII. For myself, I stand on the side of "why should they"?

Why should people take responsibility for a world in which they were not part of? And even if we are not talking about a society here, but ONE PERSON. Why should that one person take responsibility of a past action, if in fact, she knew the stupidity of it as soon as it was over?

Do we really have to claim these pieces that lay abandoned on the sidewalks of our minds, slapping a label on them as others call "next!" on judgement day?

This is the cruel, inexplicable, frustrating side of the world, isn't it? It always brings the past to the surface to haunt me. Its bubbles slow and threatening, splattering droplets as I turn my back.

Let the sediments of what's done drift to the bottom. What need is there for the Before to bleed into Now?

Something like responsibility floats here, but I close my eyes to it.

**

feedback loops

This is the most abusive thing I've ever been in. Is there anything worse than loving something, and that thing, it turns out, not only doesn't reciprocate, but laughs at what you offer, carelessly tossing it away in front of your own eyes?

I would like to get to that point. That point where I can talk about this without crying my eyes out, with the faucet on in the bathroom, so that my sobs are drowned out by the running water. Of which held more droplets, I'm not sure.

Is there a limit to how much can drain out of me? Have I reached it yet? Can I reach it before the last shred of my dignity is torn away as well?

Here I am, waving the white flag. So when will you stop firing?

**

gamble

Congratulations 11/11/09, you go down as the day that's second most detrimental to my self-esteem at UChicago.

I'm not even sure why I care this much. Is it simply a matter of pride? Or do I really believe I deserve better?

Ultimately, who's a better judge for what you deserve anyway? It seems that, when it comes to either them or you, there are these huge, gaping holes that blind the decider. How can anything be made right? Do you just put on a blindfold, spin around three times, and hope the dart hits somewhere close to the bull's eye?

It seems too big a trust, especially when the stakes are such a part of you.

**

mousetrap

You see? This is why. This is why I can't get into things. Because I care, all the caring on my side, unparalleled by yours. It's too much for me to handle.

Even if I think I have gotten the upper hand. It always turns out that my hand is somehow pinned under by some mysterious force these incidents have on me. I'm like a mouse who wants the cheese from a trap, and yet, always forgets that I become irrevocably pinned after some gluttonous indulgence.

When the snap of the metal bar clams down, unannounced and unforgiving. I'm always caught off guard, somehow, I never manage to outsmart it.

**

falls

Today there was a lovely flurry of yellow petals out the window, swirling in a lazy downfall. I thought of no one (and nothing) as I watched them polka dot the sky. It was just there, and I was simply in it.

A few seconds later it stopped suddenly (but not too suddenly), and she came back, right on cue.

It was over in that second, but for a moment I lived in eternity. And for once, in this forever, there was no crowding. Not from any of the yous, not even from me.

**

confessions

Saturday mornings are for purging of last night's actions, I've decided. This is my temple where I purge, talk about confessions (a theme that's been coming up this week), are they supposed to help? Now that it's out, have I purged it from myself, and therefore am guiltless? Does this justify my actions (both past and what I know I will do in the future)?

I can't help but wonder if this is just an excuse, a way out for me. At some point I cannot depend on the soothing voices of others that assure me that I have not strayed beyond the line, at some point, I will cross my line, and even my repentance here will not keep up.

**

daedalus

Even though I got out of the Middle Ages, doesn't mean you have. (Even if) I had become Copernican, you have not. I wonder if you can ever force evolve someone, like in those pokemon episodes we'd watch a decade ago, when ideas were simple and could fly, instead of tethered to the realities. Realities that run wild like the weeds in something already emptying. Here lies the possibility of us, and all I wanted was to know was

Won't you fly with me

(there is no question mark because tonight, it no longer is a question)

**

夏天一晚上

夏天初期的一晚上，我碰见了你。

那时候，夜里吹着一股凉爽的微风，悄悄的来，偷看我们之间表演的戏。你好像也感觉到了这个未被邀请的客人 ， 因为你什么也没有说，虽然你的眼光告诉了我很多。

那天晚上，我以为那风是空手的走的，但是后来我才明白，时间和它，什么都有权利带走， 包括记忆中的一晚上，包括记忆中的你。

夏天，也就是这样糊里糊涂的过去。

转眼就到了九月的第一场雨。那些蒙蒙的雨滴， 和树上的黄叶，一个一个的掉下来，落到一股熟悉的风中。那一刻，风带回来了你原先的眼光，但是没有带回来原先的你。

Some time in the spring, when the air was filled with possibility, I met you.
That night, there was a crisp breeze, quietly creeping up, watching the play that unfolded between us. You seemed to also realize that we have an interloper among us, because you didn’t say anything, though your glance betrayed quite a lot.
At that time, I thought the wind left empty-handed, but this summer I understood; time and wind, they can take away everything, including the memory of a night, including the memory of you.
Summer is more or less spent this way, hazily yet in a flash…all the way until the first rain of September. The lazy raindrops and yellowing leaves fell from the sky one by one, until they land in a familiar breeze. At that instant, the wind brought back your earlier glance, but didn’t bring back an earlier you.

**

free falling

you're so frustratingly indifferent, it drives me crazy, this is not helped along by the fact that there had been someone else, rather, it amplifies my pent up energy because it only serves to remind me that there too, nothing is certain.

don't do this anymore, it's distracting in the worst way.

**

I hate you I hate you I hate you.

I hate how I hate you and you can't feel even an ounce of this hate across these blocks, which might as well be chasms and chasms, each parting wider still in order to fit all your stifling indifference.

It's suffocating. Your indifference and my hate.

**

hanging threads

I still don't know why I do this. And most of all, to you, a person so believing, especially in things like this, who probably melts a little at all the scenes I scoffed at in Amélie, which, I admit, lives up to all its hype, probably helped along by leaning against you.

I wish I could figure things out, I wish I did it before ever going into tonight, and now, at 3:23am, it is no longer any form of salvageable, and again I hang on the threads of uncertainties. And I just wish

I just wish I stuck with the old ones instead.

**

candles

I just realized that for a long time now, I've made the same wish over and over again, and each time I never think much about whether or not it will come true, but rather how nice it is to have it already with me, in those precious moments.

Now that I've made another of those wishes, I realized that I've been very fortunate in them having realized. (knock on wood). It is such a piece of luck. These granted desires make the moments what they are, and make my world what it is, and me who I am.

It's just nice, to close your eyes and think of what you want, and when you open them, find it right next to you.

**

I want to be worthy of you, all of you. I want to get out of this egocentric rut. I want to get out of 16th century physics thinking. Those candles give me warmth disproportionate to their flames, and ignite something in me. And I want to carve their prints on my insides, and be worthy of each and every single flicker.

**

the grand canyon

Times like these I think about what could have been, (though probably would have never been). What I could have meant to you, and what I settled for. Even though I wouldn't take it all back, sometimes I still feel like I missed out.

The gulf between settling and not having, and vaster still the one between settling and the ideal--they swallowed us up.

**

disorientation

It's kind of weird...seeing you in the flesh. It dispels some myths and creates others. In the end, I'm left with a sweet taste in my mouth, slightly dry from the vodka and filled with something like possibility.

Whatever path this holds, I can't tell if I'm merely standing on the crossroads or already marching in.

**

fighting evolution

"I feel like...I don't know what you want from love."

I don't know either, am I to pine for Romeo-esque episodes, magnificent and unrestrained, yet subsiding before the dawn creeps in and you can whisper 'stay'...? Or is it better to long for something mellow and longer lasting, making up with sustainability for what it lacks in swells of movement? Is the glimmer of feeling alive to be sacrificed in order buy an ounce of reassurance?

Is it better to live rationally or violently...shorter fuses, brighter sparks?

As we go between the placid and the volcanic...I'd like to think that we get closer and closer to the balancing line, albeit we waver still.

"That's a nice picture." You say.

Somehow 'nice' doesn't seem to cut it here.

**

parallel living

It's so comforting to revisit the past, you just sort of fall weightlessly into the flow of things, yet preserving a dual, external perception, fully aware of its ephemeral superficiality, of its tangential, ghost of an existence, knowing full well it cannot penetrate your bubble of reality. Some things should remain in the quaint antique shop of your mind, placed on a perfectly undisturbed shelf.

**

16th century physics

What makes a person of the past so hard to confront? They are like a small, petty sun, obnoxiously announcing their presence, knowing full well you cannot look directly at them. And like the sun, you're pretty sure you're not the only target of their actions, even though, inevitably, you make it all about you anyway.

It always takes a Copernicus to realize otherwise.

**

the sound and smell of things

It's so full of wonderful noise and presence here, I love it. More than that, I welcome it after a time of nothingness. For some, nothingness can be very fruitful, for me, it mostly becomes rotten before it ripens, carrying the faint scent of frivolity.

I've often wondered if there's anything behind that enticing aroma, sometimes I think I've just touched it, maybe. But it's too hard to be within reach, or I'm just too lazy, I don't know. Anyway, being trapped in yourself is the cancer of happiness insurance, as in, they stamp their rejection of coverage before you could utter a plea. Productivity is just a safer stock to invest in.

**

direction

It is always better to look forward, I think. Less messy. Less undignified. Here's to something more.

**

frost

You know what brings out the worst in me? You. You bring out the worst in me. With your practicalities and pride and assumptions, taking actions for granted and feelings as nonexistent. The past is never an object to you, only the future. Because it's untouchable and unmuddled. I know it.

And ill timing. ILL TIMING. Multiplies it over and makes the room freeze, one particle at a time, at once tangible and sparse like fairy dust in beloved children's tales, soon crystallizing into ice sheets between you and me and him and her, except in places where figures blur and bleed into each other. Through the silvery white film, I can't tell.

The freeze creeps over and once again I am the girl under the blue and orange covers. Nineteen and nine, if there was a difference in the decade past, at the moment I am blind to it. Tracing my hand's silhouette against the brightly colored stripes, I am caught again in exhausted words and wasted silence.

The cold comes toward me and I can't figure out whether the ice is getting thicker or thinner, but I know the faint orange glow between us is not enough.

It never is.

**

dressing up and stripping away

I need my day to have something to say for itself, you know, in case other days come up and bully it because honestly, right now, it's a skimpy little thing, possessing nothing of content or even any shiny parts it can show off.

I really don't want to spend any of my time on you anymore. Today, someone you don't know called you a jerk, and that effectively jerked me back to reality, as in, this particular dimension of being, my niche...it has no traces of you in it.

So as firmly as I can, I say goodbye to the you in my mind, the only you that I have left of me.

**

magnets

why is it that the less we know about a person, the more we are obsessed with them?

the less I know about you, the more able I am able to create, it's like you handed over the reins to my imagination, which runs freely in hypernatural sketches

conversely, nothing inspires me when I know you inside and out, and am with you always. our times hold none of my (poetic) interest

it's sad that no one can occupy both my worlds. i suppose idealizing one so human would be paradoxical, impossible, yet I can't help but wish you'd come along

**

judgement day

after I retell my past, I think, maybe you would have something to say

that's normal, you offer

it's not what I expected at all

what else do you have to say? I ask

nothing, what do you want me to say?

I don't know, if it were me, I'd have some comments

"I realize people" you say simply

and that was all.

I think "I understand people" would be the natural translation here, but somehow "realize" seems right. What is it that you not only understand, but realize? Is it your performer's potential?

**

sand

去年你问我，什么时候再回来？

我说，看看吧，谁知道啊？

你的目光找到了远方的月亮，什么也没有说。那时候，夜里的风吹的是空空的，我的心却是满满的。

你说，嗯，反正我也等了你八年了。是吧？

那几个字，落到那空空的风中和我的心里，飘走了，记住了。

我哭了。去年我回去，只哭过一次，为了一个人，为了一句话。

今年，我真的回来了，但是去年那真实的你，却没有回来。

上个夏天，你骑着自行车，拖着我去公园， 让我给你照相。

这个夏天，你的朋友骑着摩托车，带着你的眼光走了。车后喷出一条一条的黑烟，蒙住了你眼前的所有，让你看不到我。

蒙蒙的日子，像树上的黄叶，一个一个的掉下来，飞到我后面，等着风给他们吹走，可是今年的风，和今年的你，还没有来。

你说你等了我八年。

You asked me last year when I would be back.

I said: Who knows? We’ll see, I guess.

You didn’t say anything, your eyes following the moonlight in the deep, deep sky. That night, the breeze was empty, but my heart was full.

You sighed, and said: Don’t worry. I already waited 8 years for you anyway, right?

Those words, fell into the empty wind and into my heart, floated away and were remembered.

I cried. Last year when I went back, I cried once, for one person, for a few words.

This year, I really did come back, but last year’s real you, didn’t.

Last summer, I sat on your bike while you pedaled me to the park, making me take pictures.

This summer, your friends ride motorbikes. Your eyes no longer follow the moonlight, but a trail of black smoke out of a pipe, so dense it covered everything, so that you couldn’t see me.

These hazy days, like the yellowing leaves on our beloved tree, fall away one by one, till they land behind me, waiting for the wind to carry them afar, but this year’s breeze, like this year’s you, has yet to come.

You said you waited 8 years.

**

I wrote this exactly a year ago, suffering in the familiar sticky heat, one leg up on the chair, trying to keep it away from the prying eyes of my mother. It's too embarrassing, I think. For a family that does so much yelling and celebrating, we are oddly afraid of quiet contemplativeness.

I'm not sure, I used to think that loudness is what makes us feel alive, like we lived big, but now I'm starting to see that maybe the silent moments have something to say for themselves.

I realized, rereading that passage, that I don't really mention how I feel, yet I think it does come through. This is perhaps the answer I've struggled with for a long time on here now, what exactly cheapens the meaning I'm trying to convey here. The tricky thing about exposing your feelings is--the more explicitly you do it--the more its truth eludes you. If you just hold it loosely in your hand, maybe then, after the pesky little things slip away, the remains of the golden grains can stay atop your fingers, curving into perfect thin lines.

**

a slow forgetting

Ok, so I have nothing to do here. I might as well do something. Everyone else draws, or paints, I cannot do either. I used to dabble in it, but with years and years between the last time I practiced and now, my clumsy fingers stay still on the paper, uselessly. Just like Chinese, I seem to forget everything once I have no immediate use for it. What makes a person like that? Am I too hedonistic?

I’m afraid I’ll turn into one of those daughters in Amy Tan’s books, realize the value of a culture they’ve thrown away too late, and by the time they do, they’ve already become an outsider. When I go back to China, my uncle said: you have a foreigner’s air, I can tell. And it’s not just the fact that I stumble over my words like a silver trout on the net of my grandfather’s fishing expeditions, flopping everywhere yet going no where. It’s something else, an air, an aura. I think at the time I was secretly pleased, I don’t know. And if I was pleased, what does that say about me? About how I feel about myself? I used to proclaim how China is such a deep, necessary, inseparable part of me. But now it feels like hypocrisy.

When I go back, I show unfathomable excitement for old, out of fashion things. Like the White Rabbit candies we used to eat when we were little, or songs that are 14 years old. Everything I like about China is…no longer China. It no longer exists out there, but only in my preserved memories. As my cousin looks at me with perplexed exasperation, I realize how childish my excitement is to her, and I drop the decade old treasures back where they came from, some lost, tragic corner of a street vendor’s display, belonging to a seller who doesn’t even believe in their magic.

I’m beginning to wonder if what I really feel a connection to is China itself or simply my childhood. But I suppose it is an inextricable part of my childhood—would our family have been so close if we had been immersed in American culture?

But even now, the closeness is dissolving. Those I had shared so much with barely make an effort, and it leads me into a muddled state of confusion and disillusionment.

And if the people were my sole means of having a present connection with my past, then their fading will inevitably lead to a disconnection of myself from whatever I remember. Even now it seems like another life. Can I stop or even slow this forgetting?

**

mirror image

Do you ever catch yourself off guard, like when you pass by a car window, and you have a split moment of...disrecognition or something, and you think: What is that picture doing there? Would my 15-year-old self have recognized her?

But then, you realize, that no matter what you do, you can't force yourself to grow faster than you can, or in a direction without your knowing, and perhaps, that's the most comforting thing you can think of right now.

**

puppet show

The past always comes up to haunt me. Even when I have detached myself, and put it, now, and tomorrow into neat compartments, I forget that others might not have done the same.

These strings and strings bind my actions together, and even almost strangers have the power to pluck away at them, causing reverberations that echo throughout the tangled web...all the way up to this point, up to now, threatening to send vibrations into the next moment.

**

deconstruction

Dan: When I get back, please tell me the truth.
Alice: Why?
Dan: Because I'm addicted to it. Because without it, we're animals

In a world that prizes clever wordplay over the truth, is nothing good for itself once it’s put up for display? What I write…does it reflect what I am at all? If it’s all a bunch of lies, is there something in the lies that really, truly capture reality? Or is it just false through and through?

**

innocence

It was fine, all fine, I suppose. I guess I'm just not that sort of a girl, who does that sort of a thing, but then, why do I have to label myself anything? Why do I have to *be*? Why can't I just live?

My nonchalantness shocks me a little. It's just...whatever. Is it? Is it supposed to be whatever? Is it only whatever because the person I care about is separate from the person I have fun with...so that now I need not stir up some new obsession?

"...so innocent" Looking back, I decide that this is the pivoting moment. When, instead of taking offense, I realize that perhaps this is what I am now, and what kind of person I'm supposed to be with, and that gap, well, that gap can't be mended. Or maybe, I no longer want to mend it.

**

transfer

I’m really starting to get that itch. You know, for something to happen. And the thing is, I always hang on a lot longer than the other End. And I remember all the things that End has said, has done, has looked.

And worse than this fixation on the past? I obsess about a future, a future that might not be realized. Until I brew it up to a bubbling point, at which I transfer this craziness to reality, to actual, tangible actions that affect actual, tangible people.

**

cycles

I wonder if it gets easier each time you do it, like a hideous crime of some sort

--you just sort of detach yourself from...I don't know, the guilt, maybe, or feeling when you are committing this deed, or feeling in general, feeling itself, feeling anything--or nothing--at all.

**

false start

The more I think about it, the more false it seems. So that everything I thought is built on an illusion.

I wonder if you can only let go of something only when you have grasp on something else, no matter how fictitious that replacement may be.

I really wish my hands could just be empty for a while, and not wrap greedily around some new desire as the old one slips away.

What is this illusory person doing for us? Does he simply stand for some sort of security, giving us an idea to hold on to?

The thing is, I don't want to look forward, I just want to stand still. At this infinitesimally small point, squeezed into a blot in time, where the past and future are nonexistent, and stay here for a while.

**

asking for too much

Look, I know when I have made a mistake, I know what I shouldn't do/have done. And I hate myself for doing it. So please don't remind me, because I know them all, and I know them all too well.

But then, what right do I have to tell you how to help me? Is it not enough that I ask for help, that I must also demand a certain kind of it?

When it comes to being a friend, is it better to be a mirror or a diplomat?

And when we are asking them to listen and accept us as who we are, do we first have to accept them?

**

photoshop

After our non-encounter, I still can't get you out of my head. Or should I say, because of our non-encounter, I can't get you out of my head.

Somewhere along the bridge between the disappointing reality and my mind...I got lost.

So here I am, wandering without the compass of logic and reason. Where images are laid out exquisitely around me like autumn leaves, fanned out with the utmost care, so that the whole constructed, artificial scene can hold a natural charm.

The irony here, (because I'm so fond of finding it everywhere), is that even the natural is made-up, what happens with careless abandon are so rarely beautiful, that we often take them back to the editing room, paint on the artistic touches with painstaking detail. And when those lovely, truly natural moments do happen. We do everything to preserve them, including tampering with the very essence of what made them so magical in the first place.

These artificial ideas, with their subtle enhancements, saturated with hope and tints of naivety, of wishful thinking, of idealistic foolishness...these painful, indulgent ideas, I want to let go of each and every single one. But most of all,

I want to let go of the idea of you.

**

It's all in your head

You know how there are these inevitable events in the future that you sort of just SEE...awkward and unavoidable?

And you build them up with all this tension and full, brimming silences...and when they finally happen, it's as ordinary as peeling a banana in the morning, or taking the ponytail out of your hair...I think this must be what inspires existential crises.

Reality is very disappointing.

In any case, I thought it was the exact closure that I needed, but it turned out, it's the beginning of yet another wave of agitation.

Why do I create stirrings when reality has made it so plain that there's practically nothing to work with?

What is it about emptiness that makes us want to fill them up?

**

the paradox, cont.

Ok, here is something that I desperately needed to learn but only began to realize now: you can’t change people. They are who they are and the only choice you have is whether to love them, or move on.

I used to believe that communication (or demands) can change a person’s behavior, but the crucial—and the only—difference is that now the person will simply tell you what they are, instead of changing it.

I fought against this inevitable truth for a long time, but it’s kind of liberating, in a way, to know that this is your only job. To decide if someone is good for you, if there’s something there worth staying for, or to cut your losses and move on before—as life’s cruelties will inevitably have it—getting hurt.

It’s also kind of sad, with millions of years of human history behind us, with the benefits of progress staring us in the face; we invariably turn our backs to the past, and choose, against all wisdom of our predecessors, to not change. To stand still, stubbornly waiting for someone else to accept our imperfections. And the tragedy here is not our childish tenacity, but the fact that it’s so hard—so hard—to accept someone else’s.

Here is the paradox all over again, the self-loathing mingled with pride. Only this time, the irony weighs heavily upon the world, and becomes universal, too great to laugh at, yet too ordinary to be seen.

**

mirror

Why is it that we can never believe in our potential?

We see so much of it in other people, sometimes exalting in it, sometimes envious of it, sometimes thinking they don't deserve it, but rarely do we see it in ourselves.

And the way we look for validation? From wanting what we can never have, so that we inevitably fail.

Sometimes I think there's so much loneliness in the world, because we look right through what we can have for what we know we cannot.

Sometimes it's a miracle that we get past our egos to form the connections we want at all.

It's such an odd mix, self-disdain and pride.

**

detachment

What is more sad, that fact that there's always a fight close to my departure or the fact that I do not seem to care? I wonder if this is observed by them, and causes a sort of disturbance.

I used to waver between never wanting children, to making detailed notes in my dairy of what not to do when it came to my own daughter. All in fear of becoming my mother. I saw, with trepidation, that parts of my temperament exactly mirrored hers. In ways of destruction, in lashing out at the people around us, in the almost savage enjoyment of shattering everything, and most of all, in our pride. Our unmovable, insurmountable, self-destructive pride, which towered over everything else, and bullied them into obeying its tyrannical will. And what's more, I took from my mother to view anything less with contempt, as weak and pathetic. Usually in the form of my father.

Now that I'm older, I see that I am not exactly like the one before me. That I am made of something more temperate. I came to this understanding with almost unbelieving relief, fearful at any moment that I should discover myself wrong, and back to the chains of blood that runs through my veins, and her veins, and the veins of all the strong, stubborn women before us, capable of great ambition and great ruin. Like the ocean, my mother was never one to be tranquil, she was magnificent in what she could dream of, magnificent in what she achieved, and magnificent in her rage.

But now that I have made my discovery, I could understand, even sympathize with my mother. And I know, (though I don't know how I know), that I could not have done this had I still believed I would turn out to be exactly like her. It is only after I was able to distinguish myself that I could attempt to unveil my prejudice.

This seems distubingly ironic, why is it that I cannot tear my dislike away when I thought myself exactly like the person I had such terrible dislike for? Was it because I saw them in myself that I hated her flaws so much? When I thought of all the anger I felt toward her rage, was it mingled with fear that I myself possessed such a quality?

And most of all, why is it that we can only understand and love a person when we detach her from ourselves? Are we, (am I), so incapable of loving and understanding my own person?

**

Riding beside the pacific

The first few times I went to the ocean, I thought, what's the big deal? This is what everyone talks about?

But the more I come here the more I know. And the more I'm away the more I understand.

**

pause, rewind, please

What the hell is wrong with me?

I can't believe I've never learned.

Why do I go after the people who won't give me what I want, instead of the people who will?

Why do I build up illusions, believe them, and crumple into an insecure mess when they shatter before my eyes?

Why am I so idiotic??????????????????

Why can't I take responsibility for what I do, and what I know I will do? Is there such a disconnection between the present me and the future one?

How can I allow myself to detach like that?