ah, seasons

seasons in southern california are like different worlds altogether. the fall and winter blend together- the mornings are hazy and chilly, and the nights are clear with cold winds. The whole cold period is generally unremarkable, except for those days when you forget to wear a jacket. then you really suffer.
then the city goes about changing its wardrobe- there is a period of about 2 weeks when the weather can’t seem to decide whether it should be cloudy or unbearably bright, and the clouds take turns blotting out the sun. me and kim sit beside ring road, proclaiming, ‘God loves us now!’ and ‘..aw, God doesn’t love us anymore.’
When spring finally sets in, i feel it first in my nose. it gets really itchy, and i immediately scramble for my allergy pills in preparation for the long months of pollen, dust, and heat. the mornings are greeted with cheerful sunlight, which grows in heat as the day progresses. and the nights become hauntingly beautiful- they are warm, and clear, and the bugs begin making those summery chirping noises. i’m tempted to just sit outside at night for hours and hours, reliving in my mind summers past. 
days like this everyone says how much they wish they were at the beach, instead of in class. but we’re not bitter- the campus is so beautiful on these sunny days, and as on the beach there is no shortage of scantily-clad chicks. 

This is the best time of year. we’re blessed with warm weather from morning to night, and coming home to change into basketball shorts and tanktops is pleasantly refreshing. everyone’s thoughts turn to the coming summer- of swimming pools and beaches, sunglasses, warm nights out and laughter with friends.

It enough to make all this routine worth it- even impending finals. Finals coop us up in apartments and stuffy libraries- but the weather outside is so full of promise, the aniticipation only builds up the pleasure we will soon feel when we are unleashed in a joyous, raucous mob of sleep-deprived college students.. into the sunlight and springtime and simple sweet bliss…

summer is coming!

 

<photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/steph_hu/>

public transportation

the bus stop in front of my campus is always abundant with crazies. it’s strange, because you never see crazy homeless people in this city, unless you’re at a bus-stop. they only ever pass through, they never stay. maybe they find this stiflingly perfect city unnatural, too. or maybe it’s because the cops are constantly picking them up and hauling them out to the neighboring city.

but the bus stop is nothing compared to inside the bus itself- it’s like a crazy exhibit at the homeless wacko museum. and literally, all the sane people line the sides of the bus facing inward, watching the schizo antics unfold. it’s sad, kind of. the people sitting next to me give each other meaningful looks of amusement as some middle-aged lady yells at the bus-driver. she’s wearing a raincoat, and it’s 90 degrees out. directly in front of me a man wearing reflective sunglasses and carting his entire life along with him in boxes has an enthusiastic conversation with the handrail. 
i have my headphones on, and i try not to stare. but every time i see people like this, i can’t help but wonder and imagine what they were like maybe 20-30 years ago, at christmastime or something. i wonder what they were like in high school, if they went to high school, before their minds decided to take a permanent vacation. i wonder what their classmates would think to see them as they are now. maybe theres pictures of them up on a mantle somewhere, in a group of family or friends, smiling.

 

<photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/murplejane/>

relationships

I’m back home, and there’s plenty on my mind. Not necessarily bad things, just lots of things. For instance, i find it amusing that practically every living soul of Northern Californian descent has scurried back up to the bay like their lives depended on it- at the very first 3-day weekend to come along since spring break.
Yeah, take that Socal. we can’t stand you that much.
:]

Also i was thinking about relationships.. practically every single person around me is in one, or in the exciting process of easing sneakily into one. It got me to thinking about my ideal relationship, and what that would be like. and this consequently led me to the conclusion that i’m way more twisted than i thought. MARVELOUS, RIGHT??

but anyway.. the reason is this- i don’t want a nice relationship. in fact, the very thought of one makes me die a little inside. i dont want nice. i don’t want pleasant. i don’t even want peaceful, or sweet, or comfortable. i see everyone around me comfortably, happily settled or dreaming of a comfortable, happily settled relationship, and i’m.. incredibly bored. shit, my perfect relationship would be ANYTHING BUT perfect. i DONT want to be one of those girls who write in their ‘about me’s’ “i love my boyfriend _____. he makes me happier than anything in the world.”
i mean, that’s wonderful. but it’s not me. my imperfect relationship would be completely insane. the guy that i’m going to consider my first love is going to argue with me ALL THE TIME. i want him to be smarter than me, so that he can put me in my place when the situation calls for it and i’m just being an incredible pain-in-the-ass. he’ll be more mature than me, so he’ll know to just let me have my way when it’s really not worth it to put up a fight. and he’ll be more compassionate than me, so he’ll still show me love and old-fashioned incredibly puke-y romance and be completely unafraid that i might just burst out laughing or make him feel like a complete retard. which, really, hopefully, i won’t. 

a crazy, open, ridiculous, nonsensical, clashing, crashing, passionate, relationship. the running naked in the streets kind. the kind where every day you’re with this person, you really know you’re alive. you might be driven completely insane. you might not even be happy at the moment. but you’re completely in love and you’re completely alive and you experience all the mad human emotions that we were put on this earth to feel. the kind Dave Grohl wrote ‘everlong’ about.. where every day, you’re growing and changing.
i dont know, maybe you’re reading this and thinking that what i’m talking about is an immature relationship. the kind that’s only filled with excitement and turmoil and hormones- the kind reserved for adolescents and silly teens who aren’t mature enough to realize that true happiness is found in compatability and compromise. and maybe you’re right. but.. we’re young. and we’re all still learning, no matter how much we think we know about life. maybe in the long run, it is better to have a mature, peaceful relationship with that compatible someone. but i don’t want maturity. i don’t want complacency. i don’t want that life.. yet.
this is the age in our lives that should be filled with spontanaeity and madness, impossibly optimistic dreams, going BIG or going home, taking it all, living it up, running, laughing loudly, driving endlessly.

i have the rest of my life to lose my spark, settle into a routine, and marry that compatible someone.
so while i still CAN… fuck if i’m not going to live the best life i can dream up while i’m young.

and maybe this will never happen for me, who knows? but people.. stop fucking settling. stop being OKAY, and mediocre, and complacent. YOU’RE SO YOUNG goddammit, if i could conjure up the 50-years-later YOU and introduce you to yourself, by god that older you would probably sock you right in the balls. or face, depending on whether you’re unfortunate enough to own a pair. and they would tell you to PLEASE… get out of your comfort zone, jump out of an airplane, ask that superhot chick if her boobs are real, scream obscenities out of your car window at 3am, eat day-old sushi, tailgate a cop, drink til’ sunrise, be in a relationship where you’re wholly yourself and completely mad.. be unafraid of all the crazy out-of-control beautiful things life has to offer. but only to the young.
and maybe to the young-at-heart as well, but c’mon.. all of those things are way better when your body can actually keep up with your mind.. ha ha ha.

it’s easier said than done, i know. isn’t that the case with all good things in life? even if you’re not going to suddenly go off-the-walls crazy.. live your life day to day, and in small acts of self-liberation. be yourself completely, at the very least. shit, get an inappropriate piercing. i have gaping plugs in my earlobes and a metal ball sticking out of my lip not because i think it makes me totally rad. (okay, maybe a little bit)
but they’re daily reminders to live without fear, to be completely comfortable in my own skin and to be liberated.

life is just way too short to be normal all the time.

 

<photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/koppenhoefer/>

mm…. loneliness again!

am i gonna be lonely for the rest of my life?
i’m jagged and strange around the edges. i barely know myself. i’m angry and argumentative and stubborn and yet.. bashful and insecure and hopeful and hopelessly romantic. i’m like a puzzle piece with an infinite jagged edges (as sal once said).. and i’m beginning to wonder if i’m ever going to find that person who fits with someone as reclusive and explosive and unpredictable as i really am. i need someone to save me, from myself. i’m self destructive and antisocial and i push people away from me. i’m too proud, too judgemental and condescending, and yet as i’m standing far away stranded on this fucking island i don’t let anyone near.. i need that person.. to push past and save me, despite myself. 
passionate, he can see through me. intelligent and patient, yet opinionated and outspoken and determinedand bold and able to SEE me… REALLY see me, the REAL me, whatever that may be, and find me shining and brilliant and beautiful, radiant with all my glaring flaws and insecurities. he’ll see me from afar, even despite my efforts to mask myself, despite my charming front, my condescention and judgement… and complete me.
fuck. 

it sucks feeling like i NEED someone else to “complete” me. it fucking sucks. why can’t i just be happy? because i’ve tried and i’m tired of it. i’m just tired of always having to feel alone, ordinary, unappreciated. i KNOW i’m an amazing person. and i’m not being arrogant, i realize my flaws, but i also realize my strengths and beauties. i’m much more intelligent than most people i know, i think clearly and deeply, i have infinite wonderment about the world, and i see art and beauty in everything. i am humorous when enticed to be myself, i love passionately and always provide an open heart and ear when those i love are in need. i’m spontaneous and funloving and optimistic. i can write a killer composition and create the most beautiful images with my hands. i have wisdom and appreciate little things. i love the nighttime, and driving. i’m independent and vibrant.. and yet not having someone to fall back on, to always find me beautiful and enticing, for sooo long, is beginning to make me feel painfully incomplete and lonesome. 

that’s all.

One last glance in a taxi cab
Images scar my mind
Four weeks felt like years
Since your full attention was all mine
The night was young and so were we
Talked about life, God, death, and your family
Did not want any promises,
Just my undivided honesty, and you said

Oh, things are going to change now for the better
Oh, things are going to change

I am the patron saint of lost causes
A fraction of who I once believed (change)
It’s only a matter of time
Opinions I would try and rewrite
If life had background music playing your song
I have got to be honest, I tried to escape you
But the orchestra plays on, and they sang

Oh, things are going to change now for the better
And oh, things are going to change

[Chorus 2x]
Hands, like secrets, are the hardest thing to keep from you
Lines and phrases, like knives, your words can cut me through
Dismantle me down (repair)
You dismantle me
You dismantle me

Give me time to prove
Prove I want the rest of yours (prelude)
Call this a prelude to a lifetime of you
It’s not that I hang on every word
I hang myself on what you repeat
It’s not that I keep hanging on
I’m never letting go

Save me from myself
Save me from myself
Help me save me from myself
Save me from myself

Oh, things are going to change now for the better
And oh, things are going to change

sleep

i wish we could all choose our own ways of resting. why do we all have to SLEEP? it’s so tame, it’s so boring. it’s so uniform.

and yeah i’ll admit i’m completely fucking addicted to sleeping.. but if i really had my own choice.. i would choose to go driving every night. no lying dead remcycle for me, thanks.

“i never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death.” -nas.

if nighttime drives were my rest i would rest early every night. i would climb into my heart and literally feel the day melting off of me.
i meant to type “car” but my fingers formed “heart” instead. hah, that’s how much i love jane.

my rest would be me and the car and my music, the windows rolled down, filling my car with the sweet coolness of the night. filling my lungs with the air between two stars.

every night would be like a journey into my soul. and every night would be infinitely more beautiful than the most alluring of dreams in sleep. the feeling of boundlessness and freedom would be like a euphoric drug; the hum of the engine and the beats emanating from my speakers would bring me more comfort than any down blanket enveloping my body. 
and there would be swirling stars to guide my roving path, and perhaps a warm hand to hold.
and every breath that escaped my lips would be a dancing cloud of joy and release. 

my heart would stop racing, but beat steadily, and slowly, with sensual rhythm. lashes framing clear eyes like a crown. 
there would only be clarity. there would only be music. and the rushing wind.

smells..

smells.
they make me wanna cry.. in psych i’ve learned over and over that the area of our brains the process smells is very closely linked to our emotional center. which is why.. when you’re smelling a familiar smell, you’re not just processing it with your nose.. you’re feeling it. 

and that’s also why even a scent from a longass time ago can bring back intense and vivid memories. the smell of the citrusy-mango air freshener that was plugged in the wall of my dorm room freshman year brings back such a wave of nostalgia and emotions i could cry.. and it’s exactly like i’m back there again, with everything novel and new, my sweet roomie arianna a complete stranger to me…

and likewise the smell of the apple-vanilla wall freshener from the beginning of sophomore year reminds me so vividly of new furniture, a foreign new house, kim. 

my old perfume.. ‘paradise,’ by alfred sung.. hah. it reminds me of *drew. which ofcourse, is why i’ve stopped using it. pity.. :T
the chi serum i used to rub into my hair before sleeping over with *jake.. well yeah obviously it reminds me of that time, and him.
and even though it was such a short time.. the lotion i used when *wes and i used to talk.. “coconut lime verbena” lol. it reminds me of him, and how stupidly foolish and optimistic i used to be. and how… very not myself. 
and i’m SURE.. as soon as i’m through using this new perfume by lucky, it’ll remind me of this time. and then.. what rush of emotions will lucky bring back to me? will they be happy or full of loneliness&longing and shit? gahh. hindsight is 20/20. and so is.. hindsmell. haha. i wish i could know now.. what kind of emotions now.. will bring back to me.

ahh. there are no words.

my mother was blowing her hair just now, and for some insane reason, the smell reminded me of cologne. a thrilling, fresh-smelling cologne… like.. like a boy.
aahh…. sigh.

i have this bottle of lucky cologne that was accidentally sent to me by a seller on ebay. i was trying to buy the girl’s perfume. but she let me keep it. whenever me or kim take whiffs of it, we get tremors- that’s how damn good it smells. it smells like a sexy assss clean beautiful boy. haha. guess i’ll spend the rest of my lonely life sniffing cologne and loving a dream out of my reach.

the lunar eclipse

i missed the lunar eclipse. and it’s not like i was terribly bummed about it, but i am kinda fond of the moon and all her phases. and i’d say an eclipse is a rather major phase.

last night i was lying in bed with my headphones on, and the den was pitch black. i was drifting off to sleep to my chill playlist. then ’stone in focus’ by aphex twin came on, and i woke up for some reason. maybe because that song is too beautiful to be unconscious for. 
i traced my hand along the wall and my fingers found the string that rotated the blinds. i pulled it slowly- and the room became flooded with a cool silver light.. i thought it was a lamplight. i put my glasses on and found the moon, radiant and full, sparkling in the sky. she was floating high and lofty like an ethereal goddess, like some otherworldly beacon.

soft silver moonlight fell across my face and arms in slatted patches. gazing at her, i could feel my right eye sparkling, reflecting. it was about 3 in the morning. i felt like i was the only one in the world watching her, freshly unveiled after the eclipse.
a moment like this, suspended in time, is what songs like ’stone in focus’ are meant for. 

such unreal beautiful moments come along so rarely.. but when they do, they are haunting and incredibly perfect.

musical discovery

i hunt music like it’s wild game. i hunt it like a carnivore on the prowl. and i’m at the top of the food chain and constantly starving and craving and thirsting for MOREEEEE. 

i delve into the endless rich depths of the musical world armed with five internet browser windows open, my illegal downloading software buzzing away, red hot and flooding in a torrent of my latest discoveries. 

i am never more focused than when i am hot on the trail of some glorious elusive underground artist, plucking up handfuls of related artists and tunes along the way like little precious berries. i sample them, popping them into my mouth to sustain me on my endless hunt. they burst, flooding my mouth with sweet tart juices like you could never imagine, coloring my tongue with blues and pinks and soft orange. and i smile, and my headphones pulse and sing and flood my brain with light. 

one day i burst through wooden doors and discover roni size glowing like a prize in the center of the room; squarepusher, radio dept, murs, ferry corsten, dillinja, blu mar ten, prefuse, jazzanova, aceyalone, each session brings in net-fuls of new music, and nothing escapes me. MUSIC.

music is my joy.

music is my education, and i can slave and school and study forever and never grow weary.

heartbeat

this is a weird feeling. i say “weird” and not “bad” because it doesn’t like, physically hurt or anything.

there’s not this achy panging feeling in my stomach and chest anymore. i remember overcast afternoons on the weekend sitting on the couch, that dark achy painin’ in my chest, flipping on the tv hoping to distract myself and make that throbbing loneliness go away.

now, i’m sitting on the couch, in front of the tv. and the tv is a distraction, but it’s not so necessary.

i just feel lonely. but it’s a foggy, mild kind of lonely. it’s like a sheer curtain drawn over a window kind of lonely.
i just imagine myself sitting isolated from the world, this crazy malfunctioning macbook on my lap, sweet sultry deep house tones setting the mood for… my friggin existence.
deep house.. it’s kinda been like the soundtrack for my life lately. it’s sweet and pulsing and reminiscent of otherworldly things. and dark like nighttimes and stars and cities and sunsets.. and driving endlessly.

i feel like i could sit here forever, i could do this forever and it would be fine. this loneliness, it’s bittersweet. the tv muted in the background flashing a torrent of meaningless worldly images. and the rest of the house is sleeping. this is the way i like it. i’ve been setting kaskade as my music a lot recently. for most of my posts, i think. i guess that’s why. he makes bomb sultry lonely house tracks. 

i really want to get down how i feel. but the words aren’t coming. i just want you to know how it feels to be sitting here, right now, so uncertain about the future. and knowing the future is filled with so much disappointment, and dark emtpy days, and loneliness, and in that- so much promise. i don’t know how to describe this feeling, this longing. this longing, it feels like rain. it feels like it could be stretched out to cover a millennia of time, and it would remain constant and sheer and soft and dark like rain.

this longing, it’s sweet. and it makes me want to just float distractedly through life. it’s like a movie where everything is sped up except for you- you, standing there, separate and moving slowly through the world, mind just wandering in fantastic starlit places. 
this longing, it’s for someone. it’s for someone beyond what you can imagine, someone you can’t even begin to describe, to ground you and pull you into their warmth, to pull you with them into their slow-moving world. it’s for someone to escape the rush with.
it’s for a heartbeat that beats the same rhythm as yours. it’s for that reassuring heartbeat that finally lets you know your heart is not crazy in all it’s strange and fickle rhythms, it’s not completely beyond repair in it’s irrational flying-off-the-handle bouts of desperate pounding, in it’s slow like honey beating behind, beating out of sync with life.

it’s a feeling like..
i’m just lonely. but i know i have to wait. and i can wait, there’s so much ahead of me.
and it’s a feeling like life is beautiful, even when it hurts.

 

<photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/9042776@N02/>

closer

‘To love is to risk rejection, to live is to risk dying, to hope is to risk failure 

But risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. 

To reach for another is to reach involvement, to expose your feelings is to expose true self, to love is to risk not being loved in return.’