It's been a while since I've felt this alone. Only the last time I felt this alone, I was ACTUALLY alone. I knew no one, had no real purpose, and felt completely insignificant in any part of the world. This time it's almost the opposite. I feel overwhelmed by a sense of purpose, and a sense of obligation to the world, but I feel alone in that impulse. My life is about to change drastically in 3 short months. This life that I've built here in Los Angeles - the job I worked so hard to get, the people who have become my family, the man who I've loved for the past 2 years, and the place I've come to call home - it's all about to be gone from my reality. All of it...as it is never was. Something about that hit me tonight, for whatever reason.
Everything I've learned over the past 4 years out here...all the personal obstacles I've overcome...the sense of identity I've found within myself...the love I've found in others......it has all brought me to this point in my life where I am right now....this calling that I can't silence or deny...and I have no choice but to answer it and to move forward, even if it means leaving behind everything I've established here. It's ironic how -upon entering this city - I felt the most alone I've ever felt in my life. And now...after having felt perhaps the most accepted, confident, and loved I ever have in my life...I suddenly find myself alone again, on the brink of a new step and a new adventure.
I'm so torn between this human need to cling on to the companionship I've found here in Los Angeles - of all fucking places - and this deeper need to venture on my own path alone, and to explore everything this world and this life has to offer me.
It's a double-edged sword, this calling to live life as fully, deeply and with as much meaning as I possibly can. I feel that my life is a string of contradictions: a need to connect deeply with people who fulfill a part of me, and a need to be free of attachments and indulge in my independence and try, with abandon, to fulfill my potential as a human on this earth.
It's a lonely road, I'm finding, as so few fully understand me. I guess I can only hope that those who have will not drift too far from me as I wander.
Saturday, May 6, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Beat to a Pulp
Beat to a pulp
I just talked to my best friend, Joe - an ancient soul living in the body of a 21 year old college student....I'm convinced. He's probably the smartest, wisest, kindest, most genuine and noble person I know - in all the right ways. One of the very few people I've met in my life who I know I met for a reason. He has a way of finding a simple answer to even the most complex of qusetions, as if it were obvious all along. He's the kind of person you'd want ruling the world because he's patient, even-tempered, and has an all encompassing sense of inner peace - even though he may not know it yet. He's my hero.
He's been in Kenya since January, traveling around & soaking up the culture, richness, poverty, ignorace, wisdom, depth, value of Africa, or at least a small part of it. He shares my need to travel -and not just to see the world, but to feel it, experience it, soak it up, and be a part of it.
There are so many fucking people living on this planet, and it shatters me to think how few are actually doing something to really be a part of it, to really recognize the suffering that takes place on such a vast and regular basis, and to contribute - even in just a small way - to the healing that is so desperately needed just to maintain a sense of balance, let alone recovery.
I'm guilty of it. I live in one of the most polluted and jaded cities in the world, and I work in an industry that thrives on capitalistic values that are very much at the root of the cancer of society. Greed, pride, ignorance, self-interest. I'm shocked daily by people who toss aside morals that to me seem so blatantly "right" just for the sake of making a buck. "Why should we close this deal with Camel Cigarettes? Because it's a million dollar deal! Sure, I think smoking is wrong, but we need the money."
Burn in hell.
I see it killing each of us every day...the people I work with...the ones with values, at least. This sense of a void of meaning, this cloud of convolution, this complete and desperate resistance to "settle"...as Drew said so perfectly "every day it takes a little piece of my soul." It does. I need out. We all do.
The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. That light being my impending trip to India. People keep saying that 4 months is such a long time to spend in a place like India, but to me it's nothing. How can I really see, feel, experience, learn as much as I want to in 4 short months. That's only a 3rd of a year, of many within a lifetime that so many people spend in suffering.
Even still, I need it. I need to feel something real. Sure I've experienced pain - the universal pain we all feel....the void of childhood, the loss of lovers and friends, the longing for those we know we will never have, the constant struggle to find something familiar within yourself and within another....But there's so much more. We get so wrapped up in these personal struggles - which are very real, don't get me wrong, and very necessary to a point. But they're just the tip of the iceberg of a bigger, more universal suffering of which we're all a part of, but so often fail to acknowledge.
Everyone keeps telling me to "be prepared..." "Be prepared for the poverty.....be prepared for the illness...be prepared for the ignorance, the filth, the suffering, the violence, the anger, the hate." But the truth of the matter is there's no way to prepare. All there is to do is to strip myself of expectations, of my needs, my beliefs, my values, my fear....and go. I need to allow myself to be slapped in the face, beat to a pulp, and spit out by something so blindingly real that there's nothing left of who I was before. I need for all my judgements, my hate, my insecurities to be belittled by this "bigger picture" of which I am just a mere particle, floating on a small, insignificant path. And then - and only then - will I know what's real, what's true, what's right within my own mind and heart, and what part I'm meant to play in this big, cyclical game of life.
Or not.....we'll see.
I just talked to my best friend, Joe - an ancient soul living in the body of a 21 year old college student....I'm convinced. He's probably the smartest, wisest, kindest, most genuine and noble person I know - in all the right ways. One of the very few people I've met in my life who I know I met for a reason. He has a way of finding a simple answer to even the most complex of qusetions, as if it were obvious all along. He's the kind of person you'd want ruling the world because he's patient, even-tempered, and has an all encompassing sense of inner peace - even though he may not know it yet. He's my hero.
He's been in Kenya since January, traveling around & soaking up the culture, richness, poverty, ignorace, wisdom, depth, value of Africa, or at least a small part of it. He shares my need to travel -and not just to see the world, but to feel it, experience it, soak it up, and be a part of it.
There are so many fucking people living on this planet, and it shatters me to think how few are actually doing something to really be a part of it, to really recognize the suffering that takes place on such a vast and regular basis, and to contribute - even in just a small way - to the healing that is so desperately needed just to maintain a sense of balance, let alone recovery.
I'm guilty of it. I live in one of the most polluted and jaded cities in the world, and I work in an industry that thrives on capitalistic values that are very much at the root of the cancer of society. Greed, pride, ignorance, self-interest. I'm shocked daily by people who toss aside morals that to me seem so blatantly "right" just for the sake of making a buck. "Why should we close this deal with Camel Cigarettes? Because it's a million dollar deal! Sure, I think smoking is wrong, but we need the money."
Burn in hell.
I see it killing each of us every day...the people I work with...the ones with values, at least. This sense of a void of meaning, this cloud of convolution, this complete and desperate resistance to "settle"...as Drew said so perfectly "every day it takes a little piece of my soul." It does. I need out. We all do.
The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. That light being my impending trip to India. People keep saying that 4 months is such a long time to spend in a place like India, but to me it's nothing. How can I really see, feel, experience, learn as much as I want to in 4 short months. That's only a 3rd of a year, of many within a lifetime that so many people spend in suffering.
Even still, I need it. I need to feel something real. Sure I've experienced pain - the universal pain we all feel....the void of childhood, the loss of lovers and friends, the longing for those we know we will never have, the constant struggle to find something familiar within yourself and within another....But there's so much more. We get so wrapped up in these personal struggles - which are very real, don't get me wrong, and very necessary to a point. But they're just the tip of the iceberg of a bigger, more universal suffering of which we're all a part of, but so often fail to acknowledge.
Everyone keeps telling me to "be prepared..." "Be prepared for the poverty.....be prepared for the illness...be prepared for the ignorance, the filth, the suffering, the violence, the anger, the hate." But the truth of the matter is there's no way to prepare. All there is to do is to strip myself of expectations, of my needs, my beliefs, my values, my fear....and go. I need to allow myself to be slapped in the face, beat to a pulp, and spit out by something so blindingly real that there's nothing left of who I was before. I need for all my judgements, my hate, my insecurities to be belittled by this "bigger picture" of which I am just a mere particle, floating on a small, insignificant path. And then - and only then - will I know what's real, what's true, what's right within my own mind and heart, and what part I'm meant to play in this big, cyclical game of life.
Or not.....we'll see.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Individualism
"...I said to myself, 'I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me...shapes and ideas so near to me...so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.' I decided to start anew - to strip away what I had been taught - to accept as true my own thinking."
-Georgia O'Keeffe
-Georgia O'Keeffe
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Why I Love My Job
An Ode To Trigger (By Shirley Wong)
Trigger took off for London
She was off to see Big Ben
For days and days she left us
We were lost without our friend
Without The Trig to bug us
We could finally get work done
But how we dearly missed her so
Cuz we love that giant smelly ho
And as this story continues
Before she crossed the pond
Trig couldn't help but do it
She called out Bass and Wong
Don't lay a finger on my cube
Don't you even dare
But what kind of friends were we
If we didn't show we cared?
So welcome to the jungle
No fun 'n games today
Get your ass to work, Trig
Blackline was due yesterday!
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Beneath The Green-Light Remedy
People in LA run from the rain. They live in such a tormented bubble-world that is so cut off from the reality of nature's control over our lives that they literally RUN from it! LA is built in such a way that people are inside 24 hours a day. You wake up inside your overpriced apartment, get inside your gas-guzzling car, drive through a concrete jungle of buildings only to drive inside a parking structure, get inside an elevator that takes you to your 10th floor office...inside! You spend 9 hours inside only to turn around and do it all over again to get home. Even now, looking out my window to my patio (which has walls around it to give me "privacy" from the outside), all I see is buildings...homes, apartments, restaurants, shops, cars. My poor birds, who sit right in front of my patio window, stick their little heads through the blinds, desperately trying to find some connection to the outside world, and all they get to see (through the lattice walls of my patio) are buildings and cars driving by. They don't even react anymore when a firetruck drives down the street, 10 feet from my front door, blaring it's siren. It's truly sad.
It's raining today, so I decided to take a walk. Rainy days are the best days to take a walk in LA because there's absolutely no one outside. It's barren, and it's one of the few times you can actually notice the sparse remanents of nature around you. My street has an unusually large amount of greenery & trees on it, but you never notice them until you walk out into the rain and are free of the usual distractions that keep you from looking up: people walking by on their cell phones, horns honking as two cars fight for the only remaining parking spot, people pulling in and out of their driveways. And then all of a sudden you feel a rather large drop of water fall on your head, and you look up to see that it came from a surprisingly beautiful tree that you never noticed, even though it's 10 steps out of your front door.
LA is a city that never stops. People living what I like to call "the green-light remedy," filling their lives with a constant flow of activity in order to avoid dealing with life in the moment. But on a rainy day in LA, if you know the right backstreets, you can find yourself living in one of those real moments...not the pretentious kind that you hear about in songs or low-budget indie films...but the real kind where you find yourself, for a brief moment, existing in the REAL world...the kind that was here before the buildings and the pop culture we've created over it...the kind where you can feel the tangible proof of the natural world spitting and blowing against your face, and for that brief moment you feel alive in way that even a night on the Boulevard could never compare to.
It's raining today, so I decided to take a walk. Rainy days are the best days to take a walk in LA because there's absolutely no one outside. It's barren, and it's one of the few times you can actually notice the sparse remanents of nature around you. My street has an unusually large amount of greenery & trees on it, but you never notice them until you walk out into the rain and are free of the usual distractions that keep you from looking up: people walking by on their cell phones, horns honking as two cars fight for the only remaining parking spot, people pulling in and out of their driveways. And then all of a sudden you feel a rather large drop of water fall on your head, and you look up to see that it came from a surprisingly beautiful tree that you never noticed, even though it's 10 steps out of your front door.
LA is a city that never stops. People living what I like to call "the green-light remedy," filling their lives with a constant flow of activity in order to avoid dealing with life in the moment. But on a rainy day in LA, if you know the right backstreets, you can find yourself living in one of those real moments...not the pretentious kind that you hear about in songs or low-budget indie films...but the real kind where you find yourself, for a brief moment, existing in the REAL world...the kind that was here before the buildings and the pop culture we've created over it...the kind where you can feel the tangible proof of the natural world spitting and blowing against your face, and for that brief moment you feel alive in way that even a night on the Boulevard could never compare to.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Jesse
I met Jesse today. He was asleep under a tree outside my apartment this morning as we were leaving to have breakfast, curled up on my old shag rug I had put outside for the garbage men to pick up (as they do here in Los Feliz). He was brown from the sun and the many layers of dirt that coated his skin, hair and clothes, and his face was shiny from the heat. He couldn't have been a day over 20, but could very easily have been significantly younger. When I asked him, he wasn't sure how old he was, or how long he had been out on his own, far away from his family and home in Monterey.
After a great deal of persuasion, he finally agreed to come inside so he could shower and escape the heat. After looking around in amazement and my apartment (which, believe me, isn't much to look at), I led him to the shower and he said "Thanks, sweetie...I wont be long."
An hour or so later he emerged, smelling of vanilla and Herbal Escence, and looking like any other attractive young guy, aside from the draping clothes that he borrowed from Dave to wear while we washed his. After we started talking with him a little, it became aparent that he had some mental development problems. He was almost childlike, as though he had stopped developing mentally past a certain age, but was still exposed to the desperation and confusion of being homeless in a city where he knew no one. He eventually told us that his parents - who were Christian - had thrown him out of the house during his high school years because they found out that he was gay. He hasn't spoken to them since, and had no real comprehension of how long it had been since he had left home. He told us that he had met a man who had told him that he was 26, but then said that he didn't feel that old and believed he was about 19. He didn't know what month it was, but somehow knew that it was Sunday. "My parents are probably in church," he said. We asked him if HE was Christian and he paused, looked down and said: "I try to be."
Aside from his fascination with my birds -(he would stop mid-conversation from time to time to stare at them and then start laughing out loud) - the most child-like quality he had was his blatant and honest innocence. He told us very matter-of-factly about how he would meet men on the street, do drugs with them and then have sex with them. This seemed fairly normal to him, as he really had no reaction to the notion of it when he told us, and it became clear that he had probably been taken advantage of numerous times, never really knowing that it could potentially be harmful to him. He was intrigued by the fact that Dave and I were a couple. He made several comments about how we "talk to each other so much," and he even asked us if we had sex, although he quickly started laughing histerically out of embarrassment before we could answer. It seemed as though he had never had any real relationships in his entire life. His parents had kicked him out when he was very young, and all of his human encounters since had been with people on the street with whom he either had sex or did drugs. He said he hadn't been inside a home in years.
He carried with him a small backpack. Inside it were a magazine, a toothbrush, a pair of shoes, and 2 CDs, both Dave Matthews Band. When I commented on the music, he quickly jumped towards his bag and asked if he could listen to one song, the way a child would ask for just ONE more piece of candy. I put the CD in, and turned it to the track number he requested, and "Crash" started to play in the background. As if he were hypnotized by the music, he crawled over to the speaker and went into a trance, listening intently to the song. Tears started running down his face, and Dave and I sat there in complete silence, both moved and at a loss. Once the song ended, he looked up and started chatting as though nothing had happened.
He sat only on the floor, perched up on his feet, and talked constantly as he ate a bowl of soup, a bowl of cherios, 2 more turkey sandwhiches and an entire box of crackers. I brought up his clean clothes from the wash, and he sat there smelling them with a huge smile on his face. He told us about his friend Michael who taught him about yoga, and about "Dave the Mexican," who he was surprised we didn't know. It hit me then how we literally lived in 2 very different worlds. The only difference was that he had no concept of the world we live in whatsoever. He's never known the luxury of having an apartment, grocery shopping, movies, stereos, iPods, laptops, digital cable...friendship, trust, love.
When we started putting things into a bag for him (food, soap, water) he got confused. "That's a lot of stuff to carry, sweetie," he said. He took a few selected items from the pile of stuff we made for him, and sat on the floor trying to fit as much as he could into his tiny backpack. I asked him if he had a CD player to listen to his music, and he looked at me with a blank stare. I handed him my discman and headphones, and he looked as though he was about to cry. "I can't take this. This is too nice," he said. I insisted, and he crammed it into the last remaining space in his bag.
After a few minutes of somewhat awkward silence, I think it began to hit him that he was going to have to leave at some point. I sat there cringing inside, trying to think of every possibly scenario in which I wouldn't have to send him on his way eventually. Then, almost as though it physically hit him, he quickly stood up and said "I have to go!" and rushed out the door. I caught a glimpse of his face as he was closing the gate behind him, and it was possibly one of the most painful facial contortions I've ever seen on a human...filled with a child-like sadness and fear...and it hit me then that everything we had done for him was almost in vain. We had sat there listening to the story of this stranger, this kid, who had never experienced any real love in his life. He has never had a human relationship with anyone who didn't expect something from him, or take advantage of him in some way. Everyone in Jesse's life has thrown him out like a peice of trash...and we had just done the same. I felt a lump start to form in my throat as I heard a sobbing voice yell out "Thank you!" as he ran off. I jumped up and ran outside after him, but he was already halfway to the main road.
The last glimpse I caught of Jesse was him walking quickly down Franklin, his now filled backpack weighing him down to the right a bit, and his new headphones on...back into the world alone.
Somehow it made me feel empty inside.
After a great deal of persuasion, he finally agreed to come inside so he could shower and escape the heat. After looking around in amazement and my apartment (which, believe me, isn't much to look at), I led him to the shower and he said "Thanks, sweetie...I wont be long."
An hour or so later he emerged, smelling of vanilla and Herbal Escence, and looking like any other attractive young guy, aside from the draping clothes that he borrowed from Dave to wear while we washed his. After we started talking with him a little, it became aparent that he had some mental development problems. He was almost childlike, as though he had stopped developing mentally past a certain age, but was still exposed to the desperation and confusion of being homeless in a city where he knew no one. He eventually told us that his parents - who were Christian - had thrown him out of the house during his high school years because they found out that he was gay. He hasn't spoken to them since, and had no real comprehension of how long it had been since he had left home. He told us that he had met a man who had told him that he was 26, but then said that he didn't feel that old and believed he was about 19. He didn't know what month it was, but somehow knew that it was Sunday. "My parents are probably in church," he said. We asked him if HE was Christian and he paused, looked down and said: "I try to be."
Aside from his fascination with my birds -(he would stop mid-conversation from time to time to stare at them and then start laughing out loud) - the most child-like quality he had was his blatant and honest innocence. He told us very matter-of-factly about how he would meet men on the street, do drugs with them and then have sex with them. This seemed fairly normal to him, as he really had no reaction to the notion of it when he told us, and it became clear that he had probably been taken advantage of numerous times, never really knowing that it could potentially be harmful to him. He was intrigued by the fact that Dave and I were a couple. He made several comments about how we "talk to each other so much," and he even asked us if we had sex, although he quickly started laughing histerically out of embarrassment before we could answer. It seemed as though he had never had any real relationships in his entire life. His parents had kicked him out when he was very young, and all of his human encounters since had been with people on the street with whom he either had sex or did drugs. He said he hadn't been inside a home in years.
He carried with him a small backpack. Inside it were a magazine, a toothbrush, a pair of shoes, and 2 CDs, both Dave Matthews Band. When I commented on the music, he quickly jumped towards his bag and asked if he could listen to one song, the way a child would ask for just ONE more piece of candy. I put the CD in, and turned it to the track number he requested, and "Crash" started to play in the background. As if he were hypnotized by the music, he crawled over to the speaker and went into a trance, listening intently to the song. Tears started running down his face, and Dave and I sat there in complete silence, both moved and at a loss. Once the song ended, he looked up and started chatting as though nothing had happened.
He sat only on the floor, perched up on his feet, and talked constantly as he ate a bowl of soup, a bowl of cherios, 2 more turkey sandwhiches and an entire box of crackers. I brought up his clean clothes from the wash, and he sat there smelling them with a huge smile on his face. He told us about his friend Michael who taught him about yoga, and about "Dave the Mexican," who he was surprised we didn't know. It hit me then how we literally lived in 2 very different worlds. The only difference was that he had no concept of the world we live in whatsoever. He's never known the luxury of having an apartment, grocery shopping, movies, stereos, iPods, laptops, digital cable...friendship, trust, love.
When we started putting things into a bag for him (food, soap, water) he got confused. "That's a lot of stuff to carry, sweetie," he said. He took a few selected items from the pile of stuff we made for him, and sat on the floor trying to fit as much as he could into his tiny backpack. I asked him if he had a CD player to listen to his music, and he looked at me with a blank stare. I handed him my discman and headphones, and he looked as though he was about to cry. "I can't take this. This is too nice," he said. I insisted, and he crammed it into the last remaining space in his bag.
After a few minutes of somewhat awkward silence, I think it began to hit him that he was going to have to leave at some point. I sat there cringing inside, trying to think of every possibly scenario in which I wouldn't have to send him on his way eventually. Then, almost as though it physically hit him, he quickly stood up and said "I have to go!" and rushed out the door. I caught a glimpse of his face as he was closing the gate behind him, and it was possibly one of the most painful facial contortions I've ever seen on a human...filled with a child-like sadness and fear...and it hit me then that everything we had done for him was almost in vain. We had sat there listening to the story of this stranger, this kid, who had never experienced any real love in his life. He has never had a human relationship with anyone who didn't expect something from him, or take advantage of him in some way. Everyone in Jesse's life has thrown him out like a peice of trash...and we had just done the same. I felt a lump start to form in my throat as I heard a sobbing voice yell out "Thank you!" as he ran off. I jumped up and ran outside after him, but he was already halfway to the main road.
The last glimpse I caught of Jesse was him walking quickly down Franklin, his now filled backpack weighing him down to the right a bit, and his new headphones on...back into the world alone.
Somehow it made me feel empty inside.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
