slightly watered down

a dilution of sorts

where the thoughts in my mind are translucent but i still just can't grasp them

i'm listening to kate nash. it's tuesday night and my cider is almost empty. my stomach is poking me in the ribs and whining, but i have yet to make a move towards the fridge...

soon, dear stomach, soon

i've gotten into a bad habit lately of procrastinating with my feedings in the evening. i wait and wait instead of just sucking it up and cooking something. then, when i can't stand it anymore, i fix something quickly... or i eat chips and salsa... the dinner for last night.

it's not exactly the most fulfilling meal in the world, but it is spicy.

a friend recently pointed out that perhaps i am too passive in my approach to life. perhaps i allow other people to take the reigns too often, they said. perhaps i should stand up for what i would like to pursue. i am truly thankful for this flavor of insight.

this is a wonderful idea, all i have to do is figure out what exactly it is that i wish to pursue. that, however, is where all the complicated bits come into play:

i want it all. i want everything.

i want experiences that no one else has. i want security. i want a chance to test my mettle. i want to be recognized for my abilities. i want to be anonymous. i want to risk and be rewarded. i want a slower pace of life. i want to draw my friends closer. i want to excel. i want to blow it off. i want to inspire and be inspired. i want to chase down my fears at a full sprint and tackle them to the dirt, laughing and tugging at their hair. i want simplicity. i want minimalism. i want clarity. i want freedom to say what i think and stand behind my words.

i want to know what my words would mean if i said them aloud
and to the people they are meant for

......

i would agree with my friend: i am passive in many aspects of my life. i do go with the flow to see where it will take me. as much as people think i stand waist deep in the current and dig my heels in... as much as people think i swim upstream... i think most of the time i'm floating on my back with my toes in the air and my eyes closed.

i'm making it up as i go along. isn't everyone?

two hours

the drive up north to where my friends live is two hours.

i don't have a lot of close friends up there... in fact, i could count them on less than one hand. some of them i've met recently, some of them i've known for years, but i trust them all.

the drive is a little long, but definitely worth it... especially now, and even in the heat with a car with a weak-sauce air conditioner.

it rained all the way up there, so i had the cool comfort of driving my warm and dry little bubble up through the deluge with windshield wipers furiously slapping the water away. instead of music, i listened to all my unlistened-to episodes of This American Life... the drive takes almost exactly two episodes.

usually, i listen to the episodes at home on my computer after work while i'm making dinner of some sort. this is the first time i've ever actually put my 'podcasts' on an ipod for use on the road, and i would consider it a success.

i found myself driving along and looking outside as i listened to ira glass' voice... listening to all the stories... i found myself looking at the endless sea of rice fields. every stalk looks like the exact same height as it's neighbor when witnessed at 60 miles an hour... every paddy looks like the rice paddy to the side. they are all stacked slightly so as to use the runoff of the rice paddy above it and so they cascade down to the sea around raised roads and ramshackle homes.

the sunset reflects in the water around each spike of green. the grey sky itself is reflected in the silver fields. i found myself remarking on the physical beauty of the place. i wanted to stop the car and walk about. i wanted to sit on a hillside and take it all in.

but i was in my little bubble rolling through the hills listening to ira glass' voice and contemplating the various stories of various lives... as well as my own.

and thinking about the sheer quantity of green that i was witnessing... and how as much as the country is now green, just 7 months ago it was that brown... with nothing green.

green to me is the color of freshness and rebirth. it is the color of both the struggle of life and the serenity that the struggle leaves behind in it's wake.

you can fit a lot of green in two hours

weird dream

so i'm going to do something here that i haven't done in a while... since i was a kid actually.

i'll explain:

when i was a kid. if i had a bad dream, i would most likely wake up, be all scared, then go back to sleep to the very same dream. it was so frustrating. when i was about 14 or so, i thought maybe i should try writing them down as a way to get those dreams out of my head, so i kept a notebook beside my bed. if the same dream woke me up a couple of times, i'd just turn on my light, write down as much of the dream as i remembered, and go back to sleep... usually peacefully, and often i'd never have that dream again.

so here i am. an adult, having a bad dream. granted, i know it's a bad dream, which i didn't necessarily know when i was six. it wasn't super scary, but it wasn't the most restful thing in the world either... i think bad dreams change as you get older... fewer monsters and more stressors.

but maybe that's just me... i can't say that's the case for everyone.

my dream took place in a variety of environments, and at the same time, in the usual temporally inconsistent dream fashion: out in the pitch black woods at night and in my old bedroom from when i was a kid, among other places that have now blurred away into the waking world.

in the woods i had the feeling that i was with a group of people who were hiding from something. i couldn't see the people i was with, but i knew we were all out there. it was some sort of game. we couldn't get caught. something... somethings were looking for us, and they were good. the had phenomenal hearing and smell. they could move around easily in the dark, but they couldn't see very well, so as long as you laid absolutely still they probably would find you.

but they would walk amongst you. i could feel their feet push off the ground next to where i was laying as one by one they stepped over me, and they were massive things. i could feel the earth displace with their steps. i was nervous they would crush me if by chance they accidentally stepped on me. but that was their game... that's how they got you to move. that's how they found you, because they could only smell you. they wanted you to make a sound.

meanwhile THEY would make sounds. kind of a humming moaning chant that sounded like a song.

there was nothing scary about their song except that it didn't have words.. and it was related to them, and that make it scary.

so then, in my dream, i woke up to find myself in the dark in my childhood room... in bed. i knew where i was because i could just make out the features. it was very quiet for a few minutes and i just laid there. then i heard the chanting/ moaning again... it was coming from the hallway outside the door, and i froze. i knew if i moved or made a sound that they would come in...

how did they find me in my old room? i don't know man, it's a dream.

suddenly the door opened, and my uncle mike walked in. he used to live with us growing up, and was like a second dad to me. he passed away ten years ago last february.

he was trying to say something to me, and he was obviously upset, so they words really weren't coming out very clearly. either that or i can't remember them anymore, but the jist of it is that 'why was i making all this noise'. at the same time, he wasn't blaming me. he knew i wasn't making it, because he could see me and still hear it at the same time. but he was a little upset... as was i. i couldn't explain it to him because i still couldn't make a sound.

like when you wake up from a dream when you're a kid and you try to scream but have no voice.

i couldn't talk, even though i wanted to.

so my uncle left, and i laid there for a few minutes until the sounds passed, then i got up and ran down the hall into his room since i could finally move, but he wasn't there.

my grandparents were in his bed, but i realized it too late, and had already roused my grandfather, who grabbed me in his sleep, sat up, and smacked me hard, thinking i was an intruder. then my grandmother woke up, and i tried to explain what was going on and they said to stop imagining things, and to go back to bed.

so i did, and the sounds came back... this time in my room.

then i woke up and found myself here. i thought it was perhaps time to revisit that old practice of mine, and write it down to let it go.

thank you for your help.
goodnight.

because

about this time yesterday night
conditions seemed to be just right
to pick some words, to make them rhyme
in simple metronomic time

there are no patterns in these deeds
no metaphors or hidden seeds
just rhyming words all in a row
they come as fast as ink can flow

when i was young i wrote much more
i'd lay stretched out upon the floor
with pen in hand and words in head
and little thought to what i said

i have no reason why i write
it's not from sadness, fear, or spite
more likely 'cause i like the sound
of metered rhyming words around

shells

there were some shells down by the sea
but they all looked the same to me
my feet were wet, my skin was burned
the sun had set, the whitecaps churned

then at my feet was one unique
and modest shell that seemed to speak
into my soul, into my ear
in one small voice that i could hear

i am like you, it said to me
i spend all day down by the sea
and i look up, while you look down
we both see sameness all around

but don't be sad with empty hands,
or pockets full of dripping sands,
for in the search it matters not
just what you find: it's how it's sought

bamboo

jeonju

a few images of this past weekend

return to Jikso Falls

Camping along the beach

more camping on the beach.

cinco de mayo: a 30 second history

Have a wonderful time celebrating General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin's victory over the French forces led by Charles de Lorencez on May 5th, 1862 in the Battle of Puebla.

Napoleon the third was owed money by mexico and sent a veritable grip of troops over to collect. The Brits and Spaniards were owed money as well, and they jumped on the band wagon. After they showed up in January of 1862 though, they realized that there wasn't much reason to be there and they made their apologies and went back home three months later.

Napoleon's forces, on the other hand, got their butts whipped in the Battle of Puebla on the 5th of May because they stuck around. This kind of pissed off ol' Nappy and he sent another 15000 troops. It took him 5 more years to conquer most of Mexico.

Now I'm not a genius, but i think it probably cost more to fight a 5 year war over the Atlantic Ocean than Mexico could have possibly owed them... also, given the fact that I've never heard a Mexican speak French, I think it is arguably one of the stupidest and most pointless military efforts that the French have ever undertaken.

i feel like a margarita.

viva

wanderer

so i'm beginning to wonder...

what does it say about me that i usually spend a lot of time thinking about where i'll be going next?... besides the fact that i move often. i'm sensing a bit of overall restlessness in my lifestyle. it is a strange contradiction that a job with so much security might leave so much open to chance.

does the fact that i focus so much on where i'll be 8 months from now mean that i'm somehow not experiencing the present? am i living in the future? and if so, is that a bad thing? or does it crush my instinctive, seat-of-the-pants approach to life? or does it exacerbate it.

so many questions. all i know is that i spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen, instead of making them happen. i just hope i'm not solidifying a lifetimes worth of patterns here.

i suppose we shall see.

inspiration

comes from breathing in.

it comes from opening your lungs and filling yourself. it comes from the tingling in your skin and the pulse in your stomach. it runs through your tearducts and leaps our across your cheeks. it comes from the stretch of your muscles and the way you lean forward into your being, leveraging your strength with your bones.

you have to take that energy inside you and you need to release it. you need to focus that breath and concentrate on it's form. you need to decide if it is going to be warm and soft or cold and directed. you have to share it. you have to risk something. you have to put a piece of yourself in every breath. you have to invest yourself.

for what good is breathing in, if you never breathe out again?

i can't wait for a chance. i can't wait to exhale. i have to make the conscious decision to make it happen everyday.

maybe this blog is my small way of doing this. maybe it is a place to focus my breath from time to time... perhaps it is a surrogate form... a shell to carry the air for a while. i'm not sure if it is enough, but at least it reminds me of what i want and what i need.

i don't really have a good reason why i write here. there is no message. there is no intended audience. there isn't really any focus... mostly it's just a way of talking out loud... and tossing a little bit of myself out into the world.