Tag: human condition

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personal

Support

Location: inside all day
Mood: guilty
Music: You and me got so much to prove

The clock in front of Lincoln Center

KG Betty called me tonight from Korea to tell me the news.

Me: $50,000?! How big is something like that?
Her: Three carats.
Me: Jeez! Considering how short you are, y’should just wear it around your neck. Like Flavor Flav.

OK, I didn’t say the Flavor Flav line, but I totally wanted to.

———-

Different conversation with a different woman.


Her: Did your parents support your decisions growing up?
Me: Well, not so much during the 80s, 90s and 2000s. (pause) But I’m hoping this year’ll be different.
Her: (pause then laughter)

They’ve actually always been mostly supportive of the truly questionable decisions my siblings and I’ve made in our past. Which is not to say they weren’t typical in some respects, like our education, but they gave us a good amount of latitude. For that, I’m grateful.

My pastor once said that everything in our lives can be traced back to being born to the parents we were born to. That’s so true – imagine your life if you were born to a Somalian farmer or a North Korean soldier.

My brother called me recently in the middle of the night. Apparently, my dad got lost. The thing is, he doesn’t get lost. He just doesn’t. Especially not in near home.

It’s a small thing, yeah. But it bothers me greatly.

Me: Y’ok?
Him: Me? Don’t worry, I’m fine. I just got a little…confused.
Me: (pause) Hey, I’m gonna come home for dinner this weekend.
Him: Oh, that’s great! I’ll cook.
Me: (slowly) Yeah, sounds great…

YASYCTAI: Check in with people. (20 mins/1 pt)

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personal

The Pigtail Ordinance

Sweep the leg

A daylight shot of NYC buildings

Kreese: Sweep the leg. (pause) Do you have a problem with that?
Johnny: No.

In three years, never really discussed politics. Having said that, always considered myself a moderate conservative. Believe in small government, free markets, few social programs, meritocracies, etc.

This judge once wrote of the Chinese, “[t]heir dissimilarity in physical characteristics, in language, manners, and religions…prevent the possibility of their assimilation with our people.” He hoped that “some way may be devised to prevent their further immigration.”

Here’s the thing though, he wrote that while striking down this law called the Pigtail Ordinance.

Why? Not cause he liked the Chinese (he hated us) but cause the law itself was unconstitutional.

It was a law that was innocent on it’s face – if you went to jail you had to get your hair cut – but clearly it was an end runaround meant to harass the Chinese and their queues. Even the authors of the bill acknowledged this.

So the judge struck it down. Cause, as much as he hated the Chinese, he respected the law. And a law that singled out one group of people – and he grudgingly admitted we were people – was unconstitutional. And thus, he had to strike it down, making him seriously unpopular in Cali.

This health care issue troubles me. The whole tenor of it bugs me. Cause people don’t seem to want a fair fight.

The judge’s view was this, “Despite my personal feeling, my personal hatred, I’ll put that aside to do what’s right for the country. If we’re right – that Chinese’re second class people – then we don’t gotta break the law to prove it.”

Course, he was wrong on that point but that’s neither here nor there.

Look, if y’really have a strong point, use that. Don’t make up things like death panels and resort to things like heckling.

Don’t people, liberals/conservatives, just get tired of just making crap up to win? Like the idiots that genuinely think 9/11 was by the Bush administration or a Jewish cabal.

It’s sad when you have to point to a racist and say, “Even this $@#$@ guy…”

It’s a sad state of affairs, is what I’m trying to say.

Location: 18:20, yest, adjusting watch on Broadway
Mood: annoyed
Music: I’ll soon be back again That’s what I said in China

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personal

Twilight Heat

Location: my new Montreal Apartment, cleaning and unpacking. The Montreal movers I hired did a grat job, so my work is almost done.
Mood: contented
Music: “Come down now,” but we’ll stay I’ve tried my best to leave


Her: So what did the guy choose?

My mind plays movies and television shows for me all of time cause, probably like you, I was raised by the cathode ray as much as anything else.

William Shatner was in this episode of the Twilight Zone where he was on his honeymoon but was afraid to leave cause a mechanical doll kept telling them they couldn’t. And he got it in his head that it was right.

Thought about that this week and that scene in Heat where the lead can get it all – the girl, the money, the life, everything – if only he’d leave his old life behind. Just walk away from everything. But a need to equalize something kept pulling him to stay.

The woman that stole all of my coin was seen this past week in NYC.

And like that mechanical doll, the Devil rang me up and told me what I had to do.

Told him that I just wanted to walk away from it all and he said I couldn’t.

Do you know, exactly, what a billion is? A billion is a thousand million or 1,000,000,000. Lehman brothers lost 613,000,000,000 dollars. Kinda puts my six-figures to shame.

Then again, it was my six-figures. One does get tired of having just chili and rum for dinner all of time.

It’s just the cards I’ve been dealt. And sometimes, y’gotta take your cards and let fate deal with the resta it all.

Don’t let anyone fool you, everything comes at a price. And, I’ve learned, if you let a thought bounce around in your head long enough, it’ll drive you mad. Quite literally. Better to let it go.

Besides, who’re we kidding? I love having chili and rum for dinner.

Me: He went back and shot the guy.
Her: (waiting) And? Then what happened?
Me: He lost everything he wanted – everything he really wanted.
Her: I don’t think it’s worth it.
Me: (smiling) Yeah, me neither.


YASYCTAI: Isn’t it hard to let things go. But y’gotta sometimes. For your own sanity. (apparently 36 years/3 pts)

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personal

No, not that Matthew Perry…

Location: 14:00 yest, melting at 14th Street
Mood: still #@$@#$@# hot
Music: Callin all nations To put it on the line

Police cars near the PATH station in downtown NYC
Her: Cruise’s a good actor. I mean, when he plays a character, he’s that character. Not like…like Claire Danes or Matthew Perry, who just play themselves every time.

Obviously I’m a history nerd in addition to being a tech one. It’s the truest expression of egalitarianism, cause people do the same thing over and over regardless of race, creed or religion.

People’re people, world around. And people’re not sane, world around.

People think that Asia didn’t have guns way back then. They did. The Japanese has it as far back as the 16th Century but they pretty much banned it around the 17th century. Which woulda been great except fast forward to March 31, 1854, when Matthew Perry (not that Matthew Perry) sailed into Japan with a crapton of guns.

Last Thursday, the Hiroshima mayor backed Obama’s call to get ridda all nuclear bombs by 2020. Which would be great if everyone was sane. They’re not.

Scarier is that these not sane people find each other and toss their not sane ideas back and forth. 1970’s Cambodia, 1930’s Germany, Saudi Arabia, North Korea – these’re whole countries with people not operating with a full deck at the helm.

Look I’m a pacifist. But the problem with most people is that they think, “Well, I wouldn’t do that.” That’s a dangerous thing to think. Cause most people don’t do what you’d do – they do what they’d do.

———-

Finally feels like August in the big city; I need a slip-n-slide like below.
Cannot wait for the fall…

YASYCTAI: Have you been in the water yet this summer? Y’gotta…(40 mins/0.5 pts)

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personal

Drums, Guilt and Shame

Shame is hating what you are. Guilt is hating what you’ve done.

Astor Place, New York, NY

A guy named Arthur Koestler once said that, The most persistent sound which reverberates through men’s history is the beating of war drums.

But during WWII, he was onea the people few that kept insisting that Nazis had killed 3 million of his fellows. Took another 2.9 million to die before someone someone stopped them.

I’m against war; only a madman is for it. But someone’s gotta do something about evil men.

Maybe Memorial Day isn’t so much about the kids that marched to the drums so much as it’s about their families who can’t help but hear them pounding.

American flag on Wall Street, NY

Bryson and his wife swung by the other day and brought me out to dinner. She’s pregnant and he’s trying to get his fourth world title in Brazil as a grappler. He’s black, which is important to understand the convo below:

Me: Hey – imagine if he came out Chinese.
Him: I’d kill you. (she laughs)
Me: Please…I’d be long gone and by then you’d be blessed with a handsome son that talked a lot with his hands.

Spent most of the holiday days with Heartgirl walking. To the grocery store, to the pier, to the park. And at night we talked. Like we always do. Told her a bit about myself.

Not to give you back-to-back vocabulary lessons, but do you know the difference between guilt and shame?

When I was a kid, was fat, ugly, and dorky. Then I wasn’t and I became shallow, mean and vain. Then in my 30s, I was humbled.

Shame’s hating what you are. Guilt’s hating what you’ve done.

Told Heartgirl that I spent my younger years dealing with the former and the recent years dealing with the latter. Don’t anymore. Not as much, anywho.

On my arm’s a vaccination scar. Remember getting it. Hurt like hell and I cried like a baby (in my defense, I was a baby).

Now, the purpose of a vaccination, natch, is to trade a small pain in your youth for a better lifetime. But when you’re a kid, you don’t know that.

Think that that’s where we’re all at. The pain’s what we gotta go through to become the person we’re meant to be. But we don’t see it until the pain’s long gone. It’s the forest for the trees.

Told her that sometimes, life has to break you to make you better.

She nodded, kissed me on my cheek, and told me I should go to sleep.

I’m moving. Not far.

Location: 14:00 yest, paying the toll and driving home
Mood: pensive
Music: hear the drums echoing tonight But she hears only whispers
YASYCTAI: Spend just a sec thinking about those drums. (sec/2 pts)

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personal

Tres Vidas

We all have our three lives: Public, Private, and Secret

Madison Square Garden

With nods to Kastinkerbell.

Dated several people who’s favourite book’s 100 Years of Solitude. Tried four times to read it but couldn’t. Not my cup of tea. But the author once said something that I think of often: Uno tiene tres vidas: la vida pública, la vida privada y la vida secreta.

That’s the first thing I thought of when I heard about three lives this past April: Philip Markoff, Susan Boyle, and Russell Dunham. Philip’s this fairly attractive guy with an immense hidden evil. Susan’s this fairly unattractive woman with an immense hidden talent. Russell was a fairly average looking guy with an immense hidden strength.

I lived with a scumbag that murdered his girlfriend. People asked me afterward if we knew that he was capable of such a thing. Always thought that was a stupid question – as if he liked to manically stab at his food when ate.

No, people’re really good at hiding their pretty and their dirty. Alla those little bits of this ‘n that, aggregated over time like piles of crumbs, cemented together by secrets.

It’s only when situations shift that our real selves cut through the chatter – whether that be by choice like Susan and Philip, or by chance like Russell. Our real selves are always there, just waiting.

After the London bombings, some dude quipped something like, “Always wondered how I’d act in a crisis. Turns out I’m rubbish in a crisis.”

It’s totally true. Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.

Me? I’d like to think that my angels’d beat my demons. Ah, but who doesn’t? Nobody wakes up hoping they’re a friend of the Devil.

An ex once said to me, If only your insides matched your outsides.

Do her one better: If only our outsides matched our insides.

Him: So, whatcha gonna do?

Me: (thinking) Dunno yet…

Composite image of Philip Markoff, Susan Boyle, and Russell Dunham

Location: 14:00 yest, being told to rinse and spit in Queens
Mood: satisfied
Music: hard to believe we need a place called hell

Categories
personal

God the Car Salesman

Location: a green couch she hates
Mood: optimistic
Music: Hey, he said, grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.


Her: How can you believe in a religion where some people are saved and others aren’t?
Me: I don’t make the rules, I just try to follow them.
Her: What about girls that are raped and killed for just being? And children murdered for being children, where’s your god then?

It’s hard being a Christian in the big city. People look at you like you’re nuts. They expect me to be or act a certain way. A weird form of reverse prejudice.

I doubt my religion all of the time. But I doubt it hoping, really hard, that it might be true. S’ok to doubt, I think. Everyone does it. Abraham, Mary, Thomas.

A girlie I dated once called religion: a nice fairy tale. But fairy tales, and most religions, tell you that if you’re a good guy, you’ll do fine. Like god is some sorta used car salesman you gotta bargain with just right to get the best deal.

Unless I’m reading it totally wrong, what I believe seems to say that if you’re a good guy, you still get screwed. In fact, the gooder you are, the harder you get screwed. Consider:

  • John the Babtist did everything right and got beheaded.
  • Job did everything right and lost everything, everyone.
  • Peter, the head of the first church, was crucified upside down.
  • Mary, essentially a 16 year old kid, is a virgin and gets knocked-up only to live to see her son get killed as a criminal (I sorta feel she got screwed the most).
  • Joseph finds out that his first born son isn’t his either.
  • Jesus did everything right and gets nailed to two planks of wood.

So what’s the point of even trying then? I dunno. I also don’t know the answer the questions above. I’m not a theologian. Not anything, really.

But maybe we should go do good, not cause there’s a reward for our work in the end, but a debt we owe for our chances in the beginning. We owe it to the aether.

Her: I don’t think I need god. I’m a moral person.
Me: But we’re still just people and people fail all the time. I wanna believe in something bigger than my own imagination. Something bigger than my own strength of will.

What the human heart, if afforded one wish, truly wants is a do-over. A chance to get those chances again.

Spring, Easter, it’s all about rebirth. S’why we got all the pansy coloured egges. All about the do-over. My year always starts in Fall, yeah. But something about Spring, makes me hopeful.

Happy Easter for those of you that read the same book as me. For those that don’t, hope the sun is sunny where you are, you’ve got someone hot to make out with, and there’s something grand on cable for you to watch.

Actually, if you read the same book as me, I wish you the last three also.

YASYCTAI: List the good things you’ve got. (60 mins/2 pts)

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personal

Static

Location: three hours ago, leaving office
Mood: drained
Music: got this crazy dream of stripping down to truth and bone

All the static electricity in my building somehow accumulates in my room. That’s cause about once an hour I’ll touch something in my room and a huge spark’ll jump from me to that thing.

My roommates must think it’s strange that I randomly scream out, “Dammit!” by the hour, on the hour from my room.

———-

Speaking of roommates, might have a vacancy. I live in a 1,700 SF duplex and the room is a 500 SF room with private whirlpool bath, separate shower equipped with all the fixings and the best high pressure shower head and three six-foot closets. Email, please.

———-

Speaking of static, got some from a friend over his buddy. Basically, buddy’s a jerk and my friend admits he’s a tool. In fact, the only good thing that can be said about him is that he’s entertaining. Like a clown. And that they’ve known each other for X amount of years.

I get both reasons – but it’s a poor excuse for poor character. Who’s got the time?

As a kid, heard that Nixon was playing golf with Nicklaus one day and missed a swing. So Nixon looks around and says something like, It’s just us, that didn’t count, yeah? Nicklaus thought it was weird but was like, Whatever. Years later, Nicklaus was watching TV when Watergate happened, and he said that he knew it was Nixon. He knew it. Cause he saw what Nixon’s character was.

(If you read me, you know I hate saying facts unless I can back it up, so the closest I could find to this story was this).

And that’s the thing. My buddy doesn’t see it. But I see it. People’s true character comes out in the little things. It’s how I knew my ex was cheating on me.

Got extra weight? Work out. Got no dough? Knuckle up and make some scratch. Got poor character? Oooooh…dude, sorry. There’s no cure for straight-up tool.

For serious; more than anything, feel pity for him. Cause there’s no cure for poor character and the Devil and I know this: y’can’t hide who you really are.

For better or for worse, we both know that we can’t help being the sum of our possible pasts. Which, is unfortunate, cause I’d like to leave a lot more of me behind me.

Dammit.

YASYCTAI: Remember when I said, Get ridda mosta your jerks? Y’really should. (time/3 pts)

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personal

Thanksgiving 2008/Your dumb luck

Colin: American girls would seriously dig me with my cute British accent.
Tony: You don’t have a cute British accent.
Colin: Yes I do! I’m going to America!
Tony: Colin, you’re a lonely, ugly, _____. You must accept it.

— Love Actually

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’ve got running water. You might even have a water softener. And, despite the countless articles that note that tap water’s probably cleaner and better for the environment than bottled water, you’ve probably got somea that too. Little more than half the world has tap water.

While we’re on the topic of the world, the axiom’s that 1% of the world has a college education. Dunno if that’s true (in the US, it’s about 27%). And you probably got a mobile phone, a fridge, and a tv. Hold that thought.

On a distantly related note, I got ill, viscerally ill, hearing about the 13-year old girl in Somlia that was recently raped by five-men. And cause she reported the incident, she was buried alive up to her head in a stadium of 1,000 men per Islamic law. She screamed for her life as she was slowly stoned to death. They dug her up when they thought she was dead. But she lived. So they finished her with more rocks.

As if that wasn’t ______up enough, an eight year-old boy that tried to save her was shot to death. The kicker’s that the men that raped her were not arrested.

Lemme get to the point: the world is horribly, ridiculously unfair. You’d agree with me, yeah?

But – and hear me out – I submit that the world is ridiculously unfair in our favor. Can’t speak for you so lemme talk about me:

That’s all just in the last two years.

Someone wrote me once, how do you not be broken? After two months, I think the answer comes in two-steps:

  1. Be grateful. The kinda grateful you are if someone paid your tab just cause they could. Cause, that, in essence, is what you got. You got to live in a place where you got enough time to read the random musing of a nobody like me. And water’s a twist of a faucet away. Where life, most likely, has value.
  2. Pay it back. You owe the aether something for your largess. Something. What that is, I dunno. As for how? Dunno that either. Sorry. I’m not that bright and get by mostly on fading looks and charm. But I suspect God’s given you some gift. Start there, I guess.

Now you might think this is some sorta pinko commie, holiday post. It’s not. The first step above is so you’re not onea those miserable people that bitch about everything all of time. So annoying. The second step above is so you’re not onea those miserable people that are happy for nothing all of time. Almost as annoying.

This isn’t so you can save the world, though that’d be nice. Rather – and I know this sounds strange coming from a barely sober nobody holding a tumbler fulla rum as I write this – it’s to save yourself.

Cause I read/know some of you. And I hear how angry and sad some (not all) of you are and, just cause you read me, figured I’d pay some of it back this way.

The saying goes that Wisdom is seeing things as they are. I disagree. Wisdom is the seeing things for what they can be.

Don’t accept when people tell you that everything sucks. They’re lying to you. Things suck, yeah, but you don’t gotta accept it.

Andy Warhol once said that They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. That sounds about right.

And I’m not saying don’t stuff yourself silly over the holiday, and enjoy it. I know I will. Quite the opposite; enjoy it more knowing that you’re among the lucky. The blessed. Your dumb luck. Said it before, God gave me everything. The thing is that I know it. And that’s why I’m not broken.

After you’ve had your holiday, try and make it a little less unfair. Ideally, yeah, do it cause the world’s broken and you got a moral obligation to pay somea the extra you were given back. But if not for nothing else, if for no one else, do it for yourself – to make yourself a little less broken.

Cause, maybe if you do that, you can see things for what they can be.

Colin: Never. I am Colin. God of sex. I’m just on the wrong continent, that’s all.

Location: in my black chair, staring at this screen
Mood: hopeful
Music: I’ll give you anything you need
YASYCTAI: Somehow return of that luck you have to the aether. (Lifetime / 4 pts – 5 if you let us know what you did)

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personal

Aether Apologies

 

Her: Why do you always get so mad when I apologize?
Me: Cause you should only ever apologize for what you do, not who you are. You should never apologize for being what you are.

 

People used to believe in this thing called aether, which was an unseen gas that was supposed to envelop everything in the universe. No such thing but the literary concept of it still exists.

Heartgirl went on a date not that long ago and said the guy immediately apologized for being Indian. That irritated me so much.

I’m acutely aware of people apologizing for who they are. And when you put that out into the world, into the aether, it’s hard to kill it. The moment you let out a breath of, I’m not good enough because of what I am, or I’m so XXXX, it’s so very dangerous. Cause you can never be tall enough, thin enough, smart enough. And you are what you believe you are.

It’s subtle isn’t it? The idea that you’re not worthy of your three feet of space in this world. Here’s the thing, you gotta be. If you’re not, the world’ll roll right over you. Then again…

Her: I thought you said you weren’t broken.
Me: Maybe I’m just bruised.
Her: That makes me sad.
Me: Don’t be. It’s why I have the rum.

PCD’s…gone from this blog, per her request. But she said we’d stay in each other’s Venn Diagrams. I hope that’s true. Cause I could never tell if her eyes were grey or blue and would like to know.

I hear Caligirl’s laughter my head – wondering for a second if she’s right and I’m all just hot breath and lies. I gotta believe I’m not. Gotta.

Otherwise, I know the world’ll roll right over me. So I gotta believe I’m not. I just gotta.

Location: the basement of my brain again
Mood: pensive
Music: sometimes a man must awake to find that really, he has no-one