"I find it strange that in a city of 30 million people, I'm still reaching out for someone who isn't there."

trouble trove

In my youth I did some very morally questionable things. Needless and excessive amounts of drugs, vandalism, nudity, bribery, malicious lying, extreme drunkenness followed by extreme vomiting, promiscuity bordering somewhere near nymphomania and all other manners of sinfully deviant behaviour. But the miraculous fact remains to be… my age. I’m in constant awe of how much trouble I managed to fit into those few years of self-destruction; how many misfit mishaps I tossed around. A wild child just figuring out who she was, who she wanted to be later… and who she didn’t want to be ever again. I’ve been there. I’ve got the t-shirt. I’ve then trashed the t-shirt, doused it in butane, torched it, and threw it at someone. I got all the inner teenage angst out of my system… fast. I worked out my twisted abandonment issues with acid trips, corporate kleptomania, passionate sex games and a lot of tequila. A ferocious circle spilled its way into every little corner of my life. Until Adam came along. He was the front of house manager at my work, a long time friend, and crush of mine who understood the potential risks that came along with having me as a girlfriend. He took a chance anyway and we became an “item”. It didn’t take long for my life to completely switch gears as I separated myself from the drug-induced coma crowd and finally hopped off the lethargic treadmill I had confined myself to. We played poker a few times and he won rarely. Our first kiss was immediately followed by our first… everything and the more time I spent at his place, the more I became increasingly attracted to his roommate and less attracted to him. Turns out it didn’t matter since he dumped me later that same week; at two in the morning with a drunk phone call. Grapevine news spread like wildfire that he had hooked up with another girl a few hours later. I saw it coming, and moved on (although not without a few unexpected tears).

It could have been his plan all along, to nurture the broken girl back to societies moral standards and leave her in the dust once she had been successfully rehabilitated… but it didn’t work right away. I flitted and faltered a few times, running back to the familiarity I sought within chaos. I stole my next boyfriend from a two-year relationship and didn’t even blink an eye. I tried a few new drugs (see: Ketamine, GHB) and blamed everything on someone else. Eventually though, after a few more rock bottom falls, I remembered how it felt to be immersed in Adam’s world; I remembered the peace that wrapped around my mind and body; and I remembered waking up happy in my own bed, instead of some crack-house basement mattress, shivering. The memories alone were enough for me to grow some new wings and fly away again. Literally this time, as I headed to the Philippines and became the lonely stoner you know today. I’m still not sure if this is a happy story or not, but I smile when I think about it anyways. I’m 21… and I already have so much to write about. Kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Don’t be afraid of the unknown.
It’s not that easy.
Sure it is.
Well what about you?
Me?
What are you scared of?

...Being ordinary.

iBITE my nails.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve bitten my nails. A few years ago my friend Amber (who worked at one of those nail salons and had some fancy name she called herself... re: aesthetician) decided I needed acrylic nails. Fucking. Really. Stupid. Decision. My life was fucked upside down from the minute I tried to push the salon door open. Keyword: tried. Over the next week, I realized a few very important elements of my life. First, I was a short order cook and used my hands for handling raw food, very hot objects and sharp shiny things at a pace that had amateurs in tears. Not to mention I did it all in style, with a black baseball cap on backwards and disgustingly grease-caked skate shoes. Try matching that to long plastic pink things expertly glued on your fingertips. Then, I was a chronic stoner, and held the crown for speed rolling, immediately lost the minute those damn nails showed up. Not to mention grinding weed, packing bowls, lighting bowls, cleaning bongs. Also, I was an independent, adult human being. Expected to be perfectly capable of doing up my own buttons and zippers, opening shampoo bottles, and holding a toothbrush. I was useless. Completely and utterly useless, temporarily driven to insanity by a ridiculous and superficial custom. Ladies who can pull it off, I applaud you, for it is much more difficult then it seems, and while you may be able to bear the everyday torture… I could not, and don’t believe I’ll ever try again. So yeah. I bite my nails. Because I have to.

HITLER WAS AN IDIOT

I hate people who try to rationalize evil and claim Hitler, or Stalin, or any other manic tyrant to be brilliantly intelligent. Sure, they were infatuated with power, and at some point all managed to fuck up the whole world. But if they were smart, truly smart in my definition of the word, they would have realized that their motives were fuckin crazy from day one… and no amount of blood overflowing the streets would make any of it any better. Smart people avoid death, destruction and chaos, because they don’t need it to accomplish their rise to power. It’s the weak and heartless that fall back to the fear mongering, the epitome of controlling the masses, the cowards excuse to murder rape and pillage in the name of their cause. Of course, that means we as a world race… must be REALLY fucking stupid, because we fall for it, over and over again. Learning nothing from history. Re-writing the same malicious stories with different coloured inks. Justifying our own apathetic attitudes and blindly following the leader without question.

people always leave

Online friendships of any level are fleeting. They come and go and come and stay and go as fast as they started all over again. Circling the bridge between all things genuine, and all things temporary. Expectations flutter and fall in silence, no one voicing their inner longing for the people who have vanished to different things. Better things maybe. But it doesn’t make the pain any less. It just makes it easier to pretend it was inevitable and in all probability, doomed from the first e-mail, or comment, or skype meeting. Of course, it happens in the offline world too, but seems to me that the consequences are more meaningful. That the loss of a friendship hurts a little more, and matters a little more. That even if you know its simply because you’re busy with changing priorities or moved on to a different lifestyle altogether, it still creeps under your skin, and you take a minute to realize the impact that individual had on your life, even if it was only for a week or two. Even if it was only for a minute. But here, with the easy typing and convenient access, there is no remorse. There is no appreciation. Just as fast as they came, just as fast as you care about them… they don’t care anymore, and leave. So you convince yourself to let it go. You convince yourself that’s how it always happens, and concede to an online world without that person in it. I find it strange how I hide behind the tense of “you” or “person” when the subject matter is innately personal. When what I mean to say is… “I care about them.” Gone now, for whatever reason, I want those people (if they ever stumble across this entry) to know who they are, and know that however fleeting, you all still matter to me and always will, even if I’ve been tossed aside and forgotten. I’m here, a real person on the other side of this screen… and I’ll remember enough for the both of us.

mnemosyne

How very fitting it turns out to be that Mnemosyne, daughter of Earth, granddaughter of Chaos, mother to the muses, lover of Zeus, and the creator of memory and reason… is nearly forgotten. Whispered in the writings of Greek legends, it is she who first gave us designation, recognition, recollection, acknowledgment and imagination. There are very few written accounts of her legends, and I think I like it that way.  "Please assume ... that there is in our souls a block of wax, in one case larger, in another smaller, in one case the wax is purer, in another more impure and harder, in some cases softer, and in some of proper quality...Let us, then, say that this is the gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses, and that whenever we wish to remember anything we see or hear or think of in our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions and thoughts and imprint them upon it, just as we make impressions from seal rings; and whatever is imprinted we remember and know as long as its image lasts, but whatever is rubbed out or cannot be imprinted we forget and do not know."


(Socrates to Theaetetus. Plato, Theaetetus 191d).

is ignorance bliss?

When I was a child I thought casually. I considered ideas and perceptions and all matters of my swirling mind to simply be… white noise. The background music to the movie of my life. I lived in the moment as it was happening, enthralled by my environment alone and dancing to a tune no one could hear. I could run and jump and play and swim and fall and laugh and cry, somehow immersed in it all without succumbing to empathetic fixation on the hardships I couldn’t change, or didn’t understand. I sought adventure and joy within my actions, not my thoughts. I believed going for a walk could change the world. But it can’t. As I grew up, I understood that my world, was not the only one. I tore myself from the little farmville fantasy, left the rural cabin, pigs, chickens, greenhouses and bonfires behind… to be slapped in the face with the real world. Where everything was rushed and sincerity faded into little corners that become harder to find everyday. Lines were thick and crossing them meant social exile. A deathly consequence by the scale of others. A book I loved enough to read three times describes all the negativity, all the devils on shoulders, the doubts setting simple thoughts into complicated darkness, and the author gives it a name that slithers fear into me. He called it The Other. The one provoking you to hesitate, to lash out, to judge without mercy or compassion, to hate, to distrust, and to harm others. The Other in my life, wasn’t powerful until the others around me decided to force social, habitual, irrelevant customs into my personality. Within in a few months I realized I had to give up and give in, or be forced into the previous world I loved. The world no longer considered good enough. The others fed my Other until it couldn’t eat anymore, and took over. I learned the names of all the Spice Girls, I bragged about boys that liked me, I abused other little girls who were considered “uncool” despite the inner nudge that reminded me what it felt like when that was me being ridiculed. I lied with no purpose but self gain. I decided I was too good for the company of losers. I desired trivial objects and toys so much that it consumed me completely within days. I tossed aside those same toys just as quickly, and desired new ones. I considered the activities I had once coveted, to be secrets. I hid most of who I really was, convincing myself that it was better to be who they wanted me to be. Some days I wish more then anything, that there wasn’t so much fluff in life. That we all weren’t forced into this fishbowl. Everyone looking in with importance, and us looking out with insignificance. Go away others, and take my Other with you. It's not welcome here anymore.

Culture Qualms

I drift through a seasonless world. Building up immunities to the heat wave trails, day long traffic attacks, sweat soaked road sweepers and street beggers. I laugh, but not all my laughter. I cry, but not all my tears. I smile. I nod politely. I have mastered the inherent art of avoiding eye contact. I hate avoiding eye contact. I hate polite nods. I want to laugh until I cry, and stand still for a minute. “But it’s different here.” What a twisted excuse. It’s different everywhere. What is it about “culture” that makes us swell up with pride? Some traditions are irrelevant. Only accepted because we humans are persistent animals intent on hoarding the familiar. Separating ourselves. Creating herds, packs, groups. Inventing the word ‘exclusive.’ Eye contact. Fuck. How important do you really think that tradition is? It’s not even “eye contact” at all. It’s just looking at someone’s eyes. We all have tedious customs drilled into our very natures, and I suppose a few different people decided looking at someone’s eyes must have a deeper cause behind it.. or two.. or five.. or ten. Then they categorized us. By location. Oh yes. Find true meaning in your physical point on the crust of the Earths surface. It’s not interesting, it’s meaningless and I will not concede to indifference or acceptance of these habitual conformities. I will, however, admit I am not brave enough to try and boldly look at the eyes of those who don’t think like I do. I don’t have the patience to try and explain this theory to everyone I meet or the ability to actually care about the endless stream of argument and misinterpretation that comes after. But it’s bullshit. Deep down you know the little things like that are just pure, steaming, heaped in piles of sweaty smelly dirty bullshit. Hiding in the corner under the tradition table. And most of us have been living on that table for so long, we can’t even smell the shit anymore.

selfish.

So, after reading John Greens books, I became overwhelmed with highschool lovestory ideas of my own, but try as I might, could not get started. Over and over again I wrote the first chapter, realizing every female character I tried to make into the protagonist, turned into some slightly more appealing version of myself. And so.. I've decided to do the unthinkable, and write from the perspective of a guy - very much like John Green has done - who is falling for the version of myself I choose to write. So far, it has impressed me much more then my first efforts, and while I'm only on chapter two, and the devil only knows it all still needs a lot of work, I figured Id post the first little paragraph anyways. I have no working title, so bare with me, and jump right in.

"The flick of my adolescent life’s very first domino happened in ninth grade when my historically crumbling high school decided locker partners would be the simplest way to deal with the sudden surge in student enrollment. Assigned locker partners. “Shoji…you’re with Lindsey,” my teacher called out as I summoned a rare moment of bravery and allowed myself one fleeting glance. The gorgeous creature that was Lindsey Swan swirled out of her chair and, although I had every intention of playing it cool, this particular girl had perfected the art of inherent seduction. I stared helplessly as she swung her perfect legs to one side of the desk, threw me a polite smile and in one majestic movement, swept up and plucked a lock from the cardboard box near the door. I was busy thanking God for both springtime and miniskirts when I realized she was looking at me. Oh yeah… Shoji Katō. That was me. I paused for another moment to curse my overly proud Japanese father for not giving me a normal name, stumbled awkwardly out of my chair and then out the door. In the thirteen steps it took me to reach the locker, I ripped apart my brain trying to plan the perfect thing to say."

If it helps, Lindsay Swann is NOT who he falls in love with. Stay tuned, I may just be prompted to divulge more as it comes along.