I remember the last time I felt this way. The spring of 2005 brought me away from Gage towers with the same feeling of dread and helplessness. I remember the silent tantrums I threw, the anxiety, the fits of desperation, and attempts to clutch onto the dying time, ebbing away like the finest sand slipping between the cracks of my clammy fingers. I do not leave well, even from the things that are markedly bad for me, I cannot let go of because they are familiar.

A marker of my insecurity, perhaps? Probably. I'm not sure if this is something that will eventually change, that I will *grow* out of, or if it will be something that I will battle for the rest of my life. I hope it's the former. But for now, I will just grit my teeth and remember what Paco said, even if it...yeah:

Besser ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende

Anger.

No point saying hurtful things, no? Only, frustration mounts and does not quell when one does not feel justified, vindicated and empowered to name her hurt. Blind oppressors, poor white men with burdens. It will be my condescension burning into your back where my love used to lie.

Only you can help yourself there.
Of course, you hands clean, obligation-free disaster. What else was I expecting from you? Other then the theatrics of your pain, oblivious to the trails of blood you leave behind. Not yours, for you only bleed from your eyes, and that's all you see.

I will slowly regain respect for myself again.

But I can't say the same about all the respect I've lost for you. Which is, everything. I remember clearly the moment when your words started to ring hollow in my ears: It was when I looked at your life, and thought to myself "Why would I ever want to be like that?". I'm only glad I didn't take your advice, I don't want to fuck up my life like you have with yours. And everytime you laugh at me for doubting you, I smirk a little on the inside and roll my eyes.

I pine now but I won't pine later. I will not be like her, bemoaning your absence, begrudging your silence anymore. Because this child's play isn't worth it, and I get paid more babysitting anyway. You tell me to grow up and I will. Unfortunately, I don't think you can. But fortunately, that won't be my loss. Thank God it was a mere 4 months, instead of, 8 years.

The only hurt you inflict on me now is the anger of not being recognized and legitimated. But that's ok. There will be a time when you will disappear from my horizon, when you will wall yourself up again in your hurt and find some other unsuspecting heart to dribble with.

Maybe we'll return, but right now all I can see myself saying is, "remember the hurt you caused? Well that's brought me this, but no thanks to you, really."

So a few more sleeps a few more days, we'll smile and be cordial and tender. Ad then the horrible end will come, better then horror without end. Which would be you. No one has ever treated me so badly, and no one ever will again.

God, you're such a jerk.

Let me stare at you with wide open eyes.

The people who stood by me weren't the god-rockers. But they showed me the face of God anyway. And perhaps more clearly then I have ever seen.

I threw caution to the wind once, what's one more time?

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

~ R&J, Act 2 Sc. 3

This can work both ways, can't it?

Summer promises


Sun, hot days with very little on. Toes that enjoy the light and skin that breathes gently. Having lunch and dinners with my girls, talking about days gone by, hopes, dreams, how we've changed, pain and love. Smiling genuinely. Rest, peace and recuperation. Buckets of iced sugar cane and alongside seafood and spiced stingray, a wiff of a cigarette as we debrief the past semester. No more inadequate esoteric ideas and theories, but a life to hold and to live. Time to start speaking in tangible weighted words, instead of dead-end concepts spewed onto double-spaced papers and yellow walls. To find myself gravitating back into who I am, to be re-centered and to re-become, to create art and to constitute the person that I am. To find strength and peace, joy and forgiveness through new-born eyes which cast their cautious gaze onto the world.

Embrace me again, and help me find reasons to be beautiful. For I lost them here, somewhere along the way. And when refound, they will teach me again how to love truely, through everything. For there is no fear in perfect love, and perfect love is possible.

"You have love written all over you like silver on a Gypsy's palm"
~ Friend

I'm not sure if this is a culturally/historically insensitive remark, but it made me feel a little better about myself.

I love my girlies back home. :)

Do I simply attempt to justify, what I really ought to be conquering? Is my choice of a particular path less of a choice then I would like it to be? Which was is which?

水

I was 15 when I decided that my element was water. Of course, I was embarrassed to have such significant information bestowed upon me by Amy Tan. I am unfortunately so Anglo that the best of my cultural heritage is bestowed upon me by an Asian-American. But that is a gripe for another day.

Anyway. my element is water. I've known that full well. Sitting with Thi by the Tadlo falls in Laos - or rather, I was floating in the stream and he was pawing the shore like a finicky cat - I found a smug sense of belonging in the fluid flesh of the falls. And what was it that I said? That I, as liquid (and protean) in my footsteps as I am, am apt to take the path of least resistance. What else do we expect of water? "Ah! But it doing so, I carve canyons out of stone!" I defended myself against the apparent notion that I am, in my watery ways, intrinsically weak. In great weakness there is great strength, and in strength - weakness.

Then I discover that water is as violent as she is soft. Her rage in all its tsunamic blindness calls all others to beg pointlessly for mercy. And she takes, and crushes, and destroys everything beneath her indiscriminate thumb, leaving behind numb bodies and uncomprehending minds.

And this is where I am. Perhaps. Being driven unwittingly by my blind surges of intensity, I find myself rolling on forward, through time and tasks, spaces and people. I keep moving keep pushing keep racing ahead running on breath so hard it hurts to breathe.

The crest of my wave breaks and after the crash subsides, I lie still and silent. Stunned by my journey - too hard and fast. I realise that I have been blinded by my perceived importance of being, such that I ceased to find my harmonious part in anything else. My world was flooded by my immense wave of unbridled severity that I have destroyed most everything else.

有山有水 － Balance! Balance!
I ought to know. Or at least, ought to learn.
In my insistence in being who I am, please don't let me destroy everything that otherwise validates me.

So here, in my strongest of strengths, lies my most fragile weakness.
~ Thursday, July 19, 2007

Odd how old stories have the capacity to be retold into new truths, fresh like morning dew. I am a glass of split water. Or, at least, the bottle dropped somewhere, smashing into a million crystaline pieces. Nothing to weep over but impossible to recover. All I can do now, is to wait to be reconsituted. Thank God for cycles, and thank God water never breaks.

For the rest of this year, and my life, I will work on my art.