Tag: family

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personal

Bit Player

Talking with my mom about the situation.

Her: Are you worried?
Me: (nodding) Yes.
Her: Don’t be scared. Are you scared?
Me: (nodding) Yes.
Her: But you’re gonna be alright, right?
Me: (lying) Yes.
Her: (satisfied) God will take care of you.

Here’s my fear. What if I’m the bit player?

Take the story of Job. The story is that he suffered, but through his suffering, he lived the remainder of his life in happiness. So it worked out, in the end, somehow for him.

But one of the reasons he suffered was because his kids all died. They were the bit players in Job’s story. It didn’t work out for them at all. We don’t even know their names or anything about them. Nothing.

Maybe my rotten luck is just for the benefit of some greater thing. I dunno. I’m going to the doctor for the fifth time tomorrow for something I’ve not mentioned yet because…my life’s already so insane.

I keep wondering if it’s the lions’ turn to win.

The worst part of it all is that my mom’s so worried already. I can’t tell you how that makes me feel.

Location: 20:00 yest, leaving office hating life
Mood: indescribable
Music: On silver stars I wish and wish and wish (Spotify)

Categories
business personal

Scurry

Location: in front of the tube, with a Coors Light
Mood: better
Music: Hielten sich fuer schlaue Leute

Hey, for everyone that volunteered for my project, apologies I’ve been out of touch. Things are nuts. I’ll follow up soon, gimme a bit.

———-

Up and out at 7AM. Worry, worry, super scurry. Finally stopped at 9PM. Hate, hate, hate. Tired. Too tired to go home so I went to see the rents. Ate lunch at 9:30PM.

Was beat but my dad said, Let’s watch a little more of The War. So tired but I said, OK. It’s not like I sleep.

In the middle of part three, where the Marines were at Tarawa, he asked me to pause it. He said, “Y’know why I came here? To America? Because if I was born just 10 years earlier, I would have had to kill Americans. I would’ve had to hurt this country I love so much. But I was lucky. I just missed all that. I wanted to go to America. I said I would be brave because I was lucky.”

I don’t know why but that made total sense to me. It made my day slightly less craptastic.

Midnight. Guess it’s time for dinner.

Categories
personal

Secret Project II

Location: 22:30, yest., hitting something on 72nd
Mood: better
Music: I don’t care…As long are you’re here

A brief break from Bachelor Cooking, just to keep you on your toes. Thanx to Seemore for putting our last vid up on her cooking page; to ouijacat for sending me the above and prodigallyyours for her nice words – I was feeling craptastic because I spoke to my grandmother recently.

Me: Something’s come up. I can’t come.

Her: It’s been almost five years. (long silence) You promised.

Me: I know, (clearing throat) I know.

I felt murderous but Johnny’s traveling and Bryson’s busy so I spent Saturday working with my coach, Koshen. I also just walked in from fencing. Y’ever just wanna break stuff?

Man, I wanna break stuff.

———-

Seemore reminded me that I’ve got a project in my head. Remember the last insomnia driven project I had? It turned out well, I thought, and now I need volunteers again. Involves drinking so drinkers and foodies welcome.

More practical than art. If you wanna help, shoot me an email: logan607 at hotmail.

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personal

Priority

Happy Turkey Day 2007

I’m at my parents having a pre-Thanksgiving Day dinner. My mom travels a lot for work so I don’t get to see her as much as I would like. We were catching up.

Me: …so if all that works out, I should be out of this hole in about 30 to 36 months.
Her: But what about your priority?
Me: (puzzled) My priority?
Her: Marriage!
Me: (laughing) That’s really like the last thing on my mind.
Her: What about kids?
Me: OK, I was wrong, that’s the last thing on my mind.
Her: It’s your priority!
Me: It’s really not, mom.
Her: OK, it’s mine. (long pause) I mean…you’re not getting any younger….

You know you’ve reached a new point in your life when your mother says the words, You’re not getting any younger to you and you’re wearing a Pink Floyd – The Wall tee-shirt eating a third helping of carbohydrates.

Yes, a new point.

Happy Turkey Day guys.

Location: 19:23 yest, having the conversation below
Mood: full already
Music: They say people in your life are seasons And anything that happen is for a reason

Categories
personal

Where you need to be

I’ll C U When U Get There

The thing about relationships is that you develop shorthand. Like calling up your girl and saying, Hey, it’s me.

For years my brother was torn whether or not he should go to Cali. I told him that that I knew he’d get there someday and when he did, he should listen to the song above for me.

Then one day, he up and went.

That week, I got a call from a Cali number and when I answered, it was just the song playing. And I knew he was where he needed to be.

I woke up today with it in my head. I think about it every so often cause there’re so many good lines from it:

  • Life is a big game so you gotta play it with a big heart, somea us gotta run a little faster cuz we gotta later start
  • I’d be a fool to surrender when I know I can be a contender
  • if everybody’s a sinner then everybody could be a winner
  • wrap up your pity and turn it to ambition

Now I know I have at least five people that read me that sound depressed. Real depression.

So I interrupt my usual tales of complete randomness to say that you should take it seriously. It’s such a hateful thing because in the best case, you lose time. At the worst – well the outcome is like any other terminal disease.

The line that I particularly like from that song goes:

I’ma scuffle and struggle until I’m breathless and weak

To get to where you need to be, you gotta. And you should, until you’re breathless and weak.

Then you should do it again, yeah?

Back to complete randomness tomorrow.

Location: 8PM yest, showing the apartment to rent
Mood: concerned
Music: you gotta face responsibility one day, my brother
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personal

Semper Fidelis

All bad things start from disloyalty

 

To continue from my last post, there’s this movie people either love or hate: Bride with White Hair. In it, the protagonist jokingly promised his chick that he would get her a flower one day that only bloomed once every twenty years on a snow-capped mountaintop. Later in the story, he betrays her.

To make amends, he sits in the snow, alone, in front of this plant for ten years, waiting for it to bloom. For her. Fool boy.

A friend recently gave me a drunken compliment: Logan’s got his issues but he’s f___ing loyal. If I was locked up in a cell in Panama and I had one call, he’d be it.

High praise.

See, anything bad that could happen starts with disloyalty, yeah?

Cheating, lying, stealing, it all starts from there. You can’t get there without being disloyal first.

The goods? Love, respect, trust – you can’t get there without being loyal first.

That’s why I’ve never cheated on anyone. It’s also why I never speak ill of anyone after we break up. At it’s most basic, it’s disloyal.

Unless the reason we broke up comes from disloyalty. Then, screw it. Screw them.

Yeah, I got my faults. I got a whole blog of faults. But what he said made my drunken night.

Cause the people that know me, they know I’d sit on a mountain top and wait. It might be a mountain of brick and mortar, but there I’d be.

Cause they know that I’m on their side. I’d wait.

And for my family, a good friend or a chick I loved, I’d never move.

Location: a bed with flowers on it
Mood: sick
Music: on this mountain thinking to myself You’re a fool boy
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Categories
personal

Fathers and sons

For my dad on Father’s Day

Couldn’t celebrate father’s day because of the wedding. I saw him though.

My dad graduated from the second hardest law school in Japan – the equivalent of Princeton here. I graduated in the top third of my class; he graduated in the top 5%.

But, when he was younger than I am now, he came here to wash dishes and chop fish to feed his family. He didn’t want us growing up there.

Realize now how hard it must have been to be 4,000 miles from home, not know the language and work at jobs far beneath you.

Can barely make it outta the Upper West Side.

He said my mom cried when he came home stinking of fish guts for the first time. She was the local beauty queen; he was now a fish monger.

I thought I married a lawyer, she said.
You once believed in me enough to marry me, he said, just wait.

She did and he became the man he knew he could be.

He says that he believed in himself even if no one else did.

He says that he believes in me. I’m actually a bit surprised he’s still pulling for me.

At least you’re not gutting fish; you’re already doing better than I was.

I’d like to be the man I think I could be. I’d like to be the man he thinks I could be.

He doesn’t know about this blog (don’t tell him). But I wanna say, Thanks anyway.

I’m very grateful.

Location: 1PM, yest., doctor’s office
Mood: sick
Music: daddy’s rich And your ma is so good-looking
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Categories
business personal

She got married

My sister got married!

My kid sister got married recently. I guess she’s not a kid anymore. Two weddings down; two weddings to go.

Short version: She got a letter one day from a boy she’d known years ago. He told her he wanted to meet up with her. She didn’t know why, went to see him, and he said he wanted to date her. They married less than a year later.

My insomnia has made my recent history a bit blurry. Feel slightly cheated that nothing in life is very sharp or clear.

Names, faces and events all blend together to a dull, soupy grey.

But for just a little bit, it was as if someone turned up the volume and brightened the picture; I could see that she was happy.

In the scheme of things, it’s more than a fair trade.

Location: -20 mins, saying goodbye something on the UWS
Mood: grateful
Music: in my youth or childhood I must have done something good
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Categories
business personal

Teaser Too

Today is Easter and I should be off to church but I’m not feeling well. I’ll try to make the evening service. Easter is all about renewal and I could use some right now.

It’s my own fault for not feeling well; I went out last night with my brother and friends, mainly because things are going on with me that I’m trying to sort out. Too much to go into now and I’m in no condition to elucidate but I will. I always do. So last night, I both bent time and caught a cold.

Ooooh, my aching head.

In the meanwhile, Rain and I shot another teaser for the other night – we’ll be archiving them at: www.72canal.com.

I’m back to fixing mode with my life but all is good OK.

::fix, fix, fix::

Location: @4:23 AM, stumbling home
Mood: Thoughtful
Music: Do you wanna come over and kill some time?

Categories
personal

The River

Where does the name “Luo” or “Lo” come from?

Yesterday, I met a couple going to Beijing and a boy studying Chinese. It made me remember my younger days.

There was a time when your last name told something about what you did or where you came from.

I once briefly saw a woman named Zelle, meaning cabinet in German. She figured some ancestor made cabinets. That, or hid bodies inside them.

My name was won by some ancestor who did some great deed and was asked by the emperor what he wanted. Like all good Chinese, he said, simply, “Land.”

So, 1200 years ago, he was given a tract of land in northern China in the Bing Province with a river on it – the Luo River.

Fast forward to 20070402, and I’m Lo/Luo version 120b.

Imagine if we started over again today.

We’d have names like, “Pete Accountmanager” or “Mandy Producer.” Or names like, “Edward Google,” “Sandy Fresh Direct” or “John Morgan Stanley.”

OK, maybe that last one works. You get my point.

1201 years of work and I’m the result. It’s humbling and laughable.

I know where I come from.

But where am I going?

Location: @3:00AM, in the 80s, looking for a cricket
Mood: tired
Music: You should turn yourself around and come on home