lines [ryan]

12.23.07
Amsterdam, Holland
12:55p

Thoughts are drugs.
Everything we think, we take.
You’re reading this line–taking this line.
I’m reading this line, taking this line.
We are taking lines.
Every sentence I add, we take together.
Every sentence I add, we take together with the other sentences I just added.
We take them with what we just ate.
We take them with water.
We are water.
We are taking ourselves.
We are high.
We are low.
We are on.
We are on something.
We are on something always.
We are on many somethings.
Sometimes we call many somethings one big something.
We are on nothing sometimes, and lots of it.
We are on everything.
Everything is on us.
On is on us.
On is.
Is is.
We be on is.
We be on on.
We be on.
On be.
We be.
Wee Wee.
We on.
Right on.
Right on is right on.
We be one with on and is and right on.
Is we on be?
Is be.
We be jammin.
We be jammin on we.
We be jammin ennui.
We on ennui.
Let’s not be on We ennui.
We are mostly on sobriety.
Sobriety can be a bad trip.
We need to come down.
We need to eat some bread.
We need to kick the habit of sobriety.
Or at least add the right ons.
Or minus the wrong ons.
Everything is a trip:
These words, your breakfast, my lack of sleep, trips.
It’s a mix.
Less breakfast, more sleep?
Maybe more sleep less sleep.
Maybe new thoughts, new clothes, different CD.
But thoughts are the strongest drugs.
Unless you don’t think that is true.
Then that thought of thoughts NOT being the strongest drug becomes the strongest drug.
Thoughts are still the strongest drug– it’s just that you don’t know that thought.
We are weakened by the strength of our ignorant thoughts.
I think.
I think even if I don’t think I think.
I think I think, therefore I am what I think—a thinker.
I think it is I who is fucking everything up, which fucks everything up.
I think it is you who is fucking everything up, which fucks everything up.
Thoughts are the ground.
I think thoughts as ground.
I think thoughts as ground in order to stand in mid air.
Everything is filtered through my thoughts.
That last thought is filtering this thought.
Everything is filtered.
Everything is filtered is filtered.
Everything is tainted including everything is filtered.
Everything is tainted including Everything is tainted including everything is filtered.
Everything is processed.
Processes are processed by processes of processes.
Russian Dolls.
Dolls.
Do.
Do nothing.
Do nothing but be.
Do nothing but be Russian Dolls.
Be Russian Dolls.
Be.
Be many.
Be many people.
Be many people inside.
Be many people inside of yourself.
Be many people inside of yourself who are all one with them selves.
You are taking all your voices.
Taking them with your coffee.
Taking your 25 experiences with final exams and tainting the 26th.
You are taking and tainting.
You are taking your past.
You are veining your mother.
You are snorting your last failure.
You are crushing your imagination and putting it in capsules for future headaches.
You are putting yesterday on your tongue.
You are dropping tears in your eyes.
You are free basing your limitations.
You are lacing your nows with laters.
You are injecting veins with vains.
You are inhaling urban mythology.
You are your own suppository.
Yes, you are taking yourself up the ass.
This is your brain as drugs.
There is no other kind of brain.
People who fear bad trips are on a bad trip.
You thinking that you are not on drugs right now is a drug you just took.
I am sober right now– I am high.
I am fucked up on this normalcy.
We are taking each other taking each other.
My perception of your response just kicked in strong.
Me thinking of my perception became another perception which I then took as a chaser.
Another chaser.
We are chasers.
Chasers chasing chasers.
I chase everything with nothing.

“I draw my line at no lines” [person]

Rabbits {ryan}

12.21.07
Amsterdam, Holland
11:46a

Rabbits

I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking about rabbits.
Yes, you are.
Rabbits.
You’re thinking about them.
I made you think of them.
You can’t help but to think of rabbits.
It’s because I told you to think of rabbits.
Me.
Rabbits.
Now you’re trying not to think of rabbits.
But you’re unsuccessful.
You don’t like being controlled.
But you are.
Rabbits.
Me.

tangential storyteller [ryan]

12.21.07
Amsterdam, Holland
10:49a

I came all the way over here to have the same conversation I’ve been trying to have my whole life. The one about fuck this whole earth life survival paying for parking thing. This thing where we have hunger and go to the store. This trying to be somebody, this I am not a failure. This I am trying to not be lonely. I am lonely. I talk. I go too fast. I say too much. I talk about death and how it is better than life. Others disagree. Their disagreements launch me in the other direction. Or they agree and then argue against themselves with to do lists. I say to don’t list. I say make enough to eat and stay out of the rain and then fuck lots. Make words. I say laugh. I say think death is funny. I say rent-a-earth. I say global warming shmobal shmarming. I say almost done. I say all of this while drinking coffee and smoking everything that burns. I smoke my fears, my selves. I blow smoke up my own ass. I hold myself in. I look around and see everyone trying to live. I feel sorry for us. This is the happiest I have ever been. With short bursts of panic mixed in like chocolate chips made from magic mushroom hallucinations– so therefore all glow in the dark and shit. I have bubbles of timelessness that protect me from everyone, me. I am moving to train track beats. The motion of her sweater against the traffic behind her, blurring to make me think of how everything is connected and how I am made from mostly water, and how that means a microwave would fucking totally boil my shit if I could fit inside it and also somehow push the buttons. I think about fish and birds and dinosaurs and planes and skyscrapers and how unlucky I am to not be them and to not have the ability to wish that you were something else.

The tangential storyteller:

Once upon a time, there was an old goat, speaking of old, my grandmother died, and death can be very time consuming, like crossword puzzles or first dates, like the time my cousin fell down the stairs at Dave and Busters after seeing what her hypothetical children with what’s his face would look like [he thought it'd be romantic], given that the computer’s projected percentages of hair lips within mixed races are accurate, which its hard to say, like when you have strep throat and everything is hard to say, especially words like ooglatarian and sabrmeinster, because they are made up, like cartoon characters, who are drawn unrealistically, but have features which are based in reality, unlike religions or frustration, which causes wrinkles, both in time and in skin, which can be cured with certain kinds of herbal lotions and or a delorean of sorts, specifically the kind with a flux capacitor, which Doc Brown drew after he hit his head on a toilet, which originally was invented by a dude named John Crapper, the toilet that is, obviously, believe it or not, I’m walking on air, I never thought I would be so free hee hee, flying away on a wing an a prayer, who could it be, believe it or not its just me.

Kinkeergaarwebildeerozgrachtkeizerwaddenwaaarsenstraat (jenn)

12.18.07
10:00am
Amsterdam

Welcome to Amsterdam!!!!

It’s too easy. Falling asleep in Seattle. Waking up in Amsterdam. Falling asleep in life. I can never sleep. I’ve been sleeping. On planes. Airport floors. Ryan’s misaligned shoulder. On anti-ergonomic air mattresses in Amsterdam. Today, I’m not afraid of non-sleep. Today I’m up. Walking down unpronounceable Dutch streets, like Kinkeergaarwebildeerozgrachtkeizerwaddenwaaarsenstraat, the brick and cold somehow charming here. The same brick and cold that was intolerable in Philadelphia. The first brick and cold that was Harvard, my first taste of East Coast, of winter, of somewhere not home.

It’s too easy. Charging tickets. Going to the places you really want to go, with the people you really want to be with. We deliberated. We were sure we weren’t coming here. We were sure we were. We were sure we could never be sure. Ryan told me to buy the tickets. I bought the tickets. After, Ryan said, What are you doing buying those tickets?

It’s too hard. Being trapped in wood boxes on a small square of earth. A square that will not be yours until you are passed your time. Until you are on certain verge. We are all on certain verge, some verges are just closer than others, like the woman on the airport express shuttle bus, the woman who at 3:30am, turns to Ryan and I in the backseat, and Ryan says, Nice band aids on your head, and the woman says, I just had radiation, I’ve had two brain tumors, I have another, this time I’m probably going to die, and Ryan says, I feel like I have brain tumors, I live like I do. We are all dying. Closer to the airport, closer to take off, we take off the weight of our decision, which was really no weight at all, but the heavy echo of other voices, voices that say responsibility over happiness. That say security over experience. That say go find a goddamn job over go party in Amsterdam. My voice, Ryan’s–our own weightless voices say: There’s no time for conservation, no time for jobs that don’t pay you enough to make up for what they take, no time for relationships that are only valuable because they are better than non-relationships.

Two TV dinners are less lonely than one.

If you own things, you believe: I am here to stay.

Our small squares are cafes in Seattle, an empty stretch of Montana mountain road, a bridge into Manhattan, our lookout points over a world of squares.

I want to buy mine in cash. Own my life upfront.

I am acres and acres of green. I can run barefoot across the plain of my stomach, curl up and drift into dreams under my own shade.

I am not up for sale.

Vondelpark.

I love Amsterdam. It’s like Disneyland, if you could smoke a fatty whilst standing in line for It’s a Small World. Everything is shorter, quainter, more cobbled. I love everyone bicycling–packs of people moving together like gazelles if people even remotely resembled gazelles. Moving down roads without walls of metal between them. Somehow I doubt there is bike rage here. Amsterdam. We’re in a snow globe village and Christmas lights are painted on ceramic gables with the brightest white-yellow, mini-bridges connecting rows of fake narrow houses. The sky could have its limits. You never know when an outside hand will shake your shit up, make it snow, make your head whirl into morning.

I love Ryan waking up at 3:00am and reading On the Road obsessively. I love reading Miranda July’s No one belongs here more than you obsessively. I love mid-stories having to read aloud a paragraph, a page to each other, asking via kindred strangers’ words Are we there yet?

I love both of us inhaling Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up cover to cover, West to East Coast, East Coast to Europe. Books are the only things that make us feel not alone. We still make each other feel alone. Me, needing holding. Ryan, needing an Energizer bunny girlfriend. He wants me to bounce off walls for moments; I want to lie down and be coaxed through them with fingers unknotting my unbrushable hair. When I am not bouncing and he is not holding we are planets apart, in separate orbits, looking at each other across an impassable void, my gravity, my pull dependent on his.

My sister’s comment on my video/poem: “When fucked up people date other fucked up people life only gets more fucked up. You guys are digging graves for each other.”

Sometimes we dig. Mostly we dance. But it’s the digging that creates rifts in our foundation, rifts we have to fill as fast as possible with quick-dry words: It’s not our fault. We are a system. Let’s etch-a-sketch. Right now is our only chance.

Everyone settles for someone.

I know Ryan settles for me. But I know I am the best person he could possibly settle for.

We never actually want to break up, we just want the other person to soften and say: I’ll help you.

(Your happiness, mine.)

Sometimes we wonder why we are here. Why we pay so much to get to places that have nothing to do with changing us. We have to change us. Not the comfort of friends who can stay up all night drawing existential graphs. Not the comfort of a town that is tolerant of your habits. Geography is just a random crossing of lines in space. We give these dots too much credit. There is no better latitude and longitude than here.

This is everything we write about.

Tonight my Best Bulgarian Friend Forever Yulia and I are meeting in front of the Van Gogh museum. Last time I saw her was at the Sofia Airport, January of this year. Mati was in a crate, most of my possessions had been dispersed among gypsy orphans, and I was leaving the first life I had ever been fully committed to. The first life I owned, loved, and loathed for the most superficial and silly reasons. I always felt bad for feeling bad in Bulgaria. Families had to use discarded morning news as toilet paper in their lean-to outhouses in the middle of Eastern European winter and I was bitter because the market had run out of soy milk again.

Yulia. We met after I first moved to Dupnitza–she was in my “Tae Bo” class. I offered her pumpkin bread. She said it was delicious. We went out for Chinese food and most likely ate deep fried bread, because that was the staple of Chinese cuisine in Bulgaria. There was nothing quite as surreal as ordering deep fried bread from my Chinese sisters using Bulgarian, because that was the only language we had in common.

For the next two years we Tae Bo’d, ran, went out, talked–realized we shared more than we didn’t share. Isn’t that always friendship? But it was strange to me then, because I never thought I’d meet someone from a vastly foreign country and connect the way you connect to your best friend next door, from high school, college.

Different challenges, the same. Different little crazies, the same. Different dreams, the same.

We’ve traveled to Turkey, Melnik, Bansko, and now, we meet again in Amsterdam.

The last time I was in Amsterdam I was 20. I was backpacking around Western Europe with a Canadian Jew. Now she’s a doctor. Doctor Canadian Jew. One of my best girlfriends from Harvard. She took me under her Jew wing in college, because I was rootless and shy, and she was uber-social and for some reason wanted to be my friend. Being from Hawaii, where everyone worships volcano gods and there are no Jews, I bought her Christmas presents, not realizing that this might not be kosher. She was my perfect first travel companion. My Europe ’00 scrapbook runneth over with synagogue photos.

We had just finished college and could only see a few days into the future. What’s next was answered in terms of cities. Interlochen? Cinque Terre? (Bulgaria was not on the map.) She knew long-term: go to med school. I knew long-term: move to San Diego. Live with college boyfriend. In Europe, the and then whats, the no, not this either, the restlessness for settling down had not yet slipped into my skin, began walking with me, sleeping with me, looking at me through my own eyes and saying, not good enough.

I guess I was carefree.

We got to Amsterdam and couldn’t find a hostel bed. It was summer. Amsterdam was bursting with all of America’s twenty-somethings bursting to, oh my god, order weed from a menu. To buy baked goods, emphasis on the baked. To go to the store and pick up some milk and ‘shrooms.

Hostelless, we rented a tent, pitched it in a field. I only remember the anti-lullaby of drunk Irish singing emanating from the tent next to ours. The rest is a blur–of the life-changing crepes, of incredible art and flea markets, of smoking hardly anything really, and of loving a city—the canals, the parks, the present—loving it in a the world is my giant clam way you love when you’re 20 and traveling off your continent for the first time.

This morning I woke up, searched for the plug adaptor in Ryan’s backpack. I found three things in a supersecret side pocket:

1. Old Philly weed dust (just enough to take one hit and feel nothing)
2. Airline stubs from our summer Hawaii trip
3. This letter from me:

One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. –Nietzsche

8.14.07

I had no idea what today was until I began writing.
Then I knew.
I knew today was our first day.
Just now.
Our day to turn it all around.
So much has happened to us this summer.
We watched it all.
Front row. Popcorn for you. M&Ms for me. Stealing sips from your coke because it’s less caloric that way.
We watched ourselves.
In Hawaii. Our most in love and not in love moments. Side-by-side. I felt dismantled. I looked dismantled. I was your soul mate one day and the girl you didn’t know how you could date–let alone love–the next. Who was I really? Who were you?
You left and I was whoever I wanted to be.
Fearful. Blocking. Selfish. Unfaithful with my attention when you needed it the most.
My voice didn’t explode with love.
I came home and you forgave me.
We turned it around.
You helped me. You showed me how.
We watched this scene and held hands.
We were the scene. We were holding hands.
All four of our hearts soared.
We were careful with each other.
I was careful with me. Too.
A few weeks of oscillation for a few days of peace. Tomorrow’s bad odds.
Weeksauce. My hormones. John Mayer breakdown. You yell and I yell and I never yell. I cry and you don’t and you never cry (anymore). Superbad and why aren’t we where we should be? Well-known, prolific artists, talk show philosophizers, bestsellers, best friends, always everything dedicated to you. My x. Instead, I ruin highs. Am terrible comfort. Cannot calm you as you calm me. Yet.
Today. We are still in this. Less doubt and fear by the moments, all passing by at lightspeed. Us passing us by too quickly. The scenes that stop time. Mati-sized window holes. Sitting on the front lawn. Breathing. Hands on Mati. Hands on each other.

Breathing.

Sometimes I feel both our pains and it is too much, all of this pain. How can everything be alright, when everything is not alright? So many fears I cannot articulate. So many I can. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind—never wanting to be a Penny to your Barris. I never want to face an “our home is sacred” moment. I want home to always be sacred. I want home to be a place no one can visit, because home exists only between you and me. I want to be okay with not being everything to you: business partner, best friend, jam sesh diva, writing muse, brainstormer extraordinaire, uber-extrovert social butterfly (even though butterflies seem shy to me…), club whore, groupie-retard ego feeder, genius wife, bacon maker, massage giver, know all of you-er, traveler, choose our own adventurer, audience member, star actress, femme fatale, kick ass debater, #1.
I don’t think it’s fear telling me I can’t be everything to you. I just have to be happy with being the best of what I am to you, and that is equity with time. And cumulative iPhone moments shared, recorded into our tiniest cells, pinpointable, erasable, everything and nothing.

It is 3:00am. I am fading.
I am tired of being defined by what I am not.
I want to be.
I want to be.
I want to be.

Love,
The girl holding this pen
about to slip into bed
beside you, about to leave you
this letter, about to be
better than anyone has
ever been to you, about to
epiphany herself into
unlucid dreams. x.

In August, before we knew, we knew. What we thought we thought of in October, post-firing, pre-leaving, I had written into our story months before, and Ryan had shoved our future into his safe pocket, and we lived not knowing what we had already written into our life.

Love,
The girl sitting in a coffeeshop
bundled beneath layers
beneath theories
beneath backed up words,
sitting next to Ryan
cold coffee inside
a clear day
finally.

reality is.

sunday
1:15pm
the bulldog coffeeshop
amsterdam

reality is what you pretend it to be.

Big Deal. [ryan]

12.13.07
Seattle, Washington
12:15a

I ran into Curtis Kamiya yesterday.

Curtis and Annie Kamiya

He gave me a big deal on a little guitar yesterday and I thought fuck yeah, then I thought, you know what, actually, HE’S the big deal. He’s the extra value. Of course, I don’t know him that well, so maybe he’s a douche wrangler and I’ve yet to find this out, but for right now, he’s the guy from Hawaii who I kind of sort of know, who is friends with some of my best friends– and so he gets extra points for that, proximity points I call them ever since just now– and he lives nearby [more proximity points], and he just hooked a brother up in this piece yo. ugh.

[breakdance pose]

I’m trite. I like to name my guitars. I’ll call this one lil’ guitar, but I’ll say it like it’s a rapper’s name. Word.

I knew him in Hawaii, off and on, mostly from passing by, in between stuff, friends of friends, this type of thing. Our social diagrams just barely venn’d. This BBQ, that restaurant. He once said we would totally be good friends if you weren’t so Christian. I was indeed, so Christian. That was over 10 years ago. I was the Stryper of my circle; my friendship must have felt like tight black leather pants, saran wrapping around one’s balls in the summer sun, with no Kona winds, threatening one’s circulation, with bible verses like– the end is near and turn the other cheek– sewn onto the ass part. I would have totally been better friends with myself, even, had I not been so Christian. He laughed when he said it. He meant, stop preaching, relax, have a beer. He was right.

When he sings– it’s James Taylor meets Kalapana meets John Mayer meets Curtis Kamiya.

I’ve yet to meet myself.

When he addresses the crowd, in between songs, he is the guy you want to shoot the shit with, meets the guy you want to learn guitar from, meets the guy who likes to meet other people who like to meet other people.

Curtis Kamiya is a lot of people, meeting. Or so it seems.

And you want to be a part of that community that is Curtis Kamiya.

Oh I don’t really know, maybe I’m just homesick.

The bottom line is: he reminded me of home.

Even if it was just some Pavlovian trigger that went off in my head when I saw his face, heard his voice, yesterday, at the Guitar Center in Seattle where he works, somehow, whatever it was, it was able to transport me into someone’s backyard, back home, way back when what’s his face did such and such to so and so during whatchamacallit, with everybody laughing, ukulele’s sha lang ga lang langing, hapa women everywhere, being all hapa, and shit, the teriyaki beef on a stick eye-ing me out from in between the mac salad and kim chee, ahhh, Hawaii, Pavlovian Shmavlovian, who cares if it’s just chemical reactions reacting to other chemical reactions, whatever makes you feel like home, gets points. Big points. Maybe I’m just a pussy and like to over romanticize my little Shireville home in Hawaii [Philly was Mordor, by the way, if you're following my Lord of the Rings analogy]. Maybe Curt saved me a bunch of money on my lil’ guitar yesterday, and saving money feels like happiness and happiness feels like home. But now, I want to spend everything I saved and more, on him and his wife, to say Mahalo… I’ll never be hired as a treasurer will I?

And yet, I feel like I treasure everything, every single thing.

Maybe it’s Christmas and I’m just feeling all gooey and shit.

Oh no, I feel something Christmasee coming on…

Shit. Here we go.

I love this feeling.

I love realizing all over again, and again, that people are the best investments.

People are the big deals.

I want to redefine the term: Big deal.

I want to make a big deal out of the real Big deals in my life.

Jenn is my Big deal dealer.

She is the reason for the season, not Jesus.

[See: Rest of this blogsite for more examples of how I love her more than everyone in the whole wide world.]

[But then again, I live with her, what else am I going to say? Failing to publicly establish her Queen big dealness among all my big deal big deals, would only effect my dinner and my sex life unfavorably, as perceived by yours truly, and it would not be wise at this juncture to comment any further, thank you for your time, I've said too much already, fuck.]

Isaac Lopez [1 year old nephew]

My family in Hawaii: Jose, Isaac, Julz, Haley, Robin, Ava, Kyle, Evan– My BIGGEST deals.

The old man and his handsome son [Many have accused this old man of possessing suspiciously superior sperm, of which this handsome young lad here, is obviously a bi-product. However, 'til this day, the old man continues to deny reports that he has been taking superhuman power pills, intended for the super-strengthening of sperm, you know, to get a genetic edge on the competition, so to speak, if you catch my drift, heh, heh, even though it is evident to all that he must have taken something I mean my god. What a speciman. This young strapping buck. This perfect combination of Japanese Chinese. This super sperm all grown up, this mother fucking genius, yeah you, I'm talking to you, sup playa.

Fuck, my hair is going to be all white by the end of June isn't it?

I love my Dad. The original Big Deal. He is my GPS.

My cousin J.K. and his wife Tricia, and BIG little Kate

My uncle Peter, Aunty Didi, and cousin Steph [who just ran the marathon in Hawaii, 26 big big deal miles, steph, girl, you crazy. but congrats, that is friggin amazing to me. amazing how stupid you could be to run that much on purpose, I mean deliberately, all in a row like that too, what ever came over you, for seriously yo? I'm kidding, you're amazing, stop it. ]

J.K. you fucking rock. Thank you for the pep talk last night, last year, last last, last first, last lifetime, I over did it with that last one.

My Chinese side Big Deals:

The Wongs: Popo, Aunty Jackie, Uncle Steven, Aunty Susan, Christine and Steph [who is studying in Tacoma and will soon have to be harassed by her cousin, which is me, because let's face it, college only distracts from real knowledge, nay, it hinders it. Thank you for being family and also being near.]

Uncle Vernon, Aunty Carla, Parker and Leah, I am going to miss eating the bestestest Christmas dinner at your Manoa Mansion.

The Yims: Uncle Stanley, Aunty Carolyn, Frankie, Jon Jon, Jason, Brian and Kevin, gung hee fat choy times infinity to all you all.

My new Washington neighbors/Nearest family: Nancy and Kevin Yim, their daughter Caroline [Tyler was at school, waa]

They took us to the biggest off-leash dog park in Redmond where they live and Mati finally let other dogs smell her ass, it was emotional, our little girl is all grown up now! Thank you Yims!

Jenn, Kaito and Sam Ambrose [me and blurry Jenn Meleana]: our first Shabu Shabu together

Sam the Man, his wife Jenn and their son Kaito, BIG BIG BIG!

Let me tell you folks, that the reason why this man’s name is the Man is not just because the Man rhymes with Sam, although you must admit that gives it a nice touch, it’s because he is the Man folks, the mother fucking Man. I’m just waiting for him to get me a job, that’s why I’m not worried, he got me my last three jobs, he’ll get me the next, I don’t have to do a god damned thing god dammit, Sam the Man will provide.

Konishiki is just big and so I thought I’d put this picture in. [Kaka'ako Kitchen, Hawaii]

Me and the grandma. She is the only reason why I don’t feel adopted. I owe my entire radio career to her, everyone listened to me because of her– I listened to me because of her. I hope I don’t inherit her toothlessness though, watching her gum over shoyu-ed spam was disgusting. [the grandma: 1914-2005]

More Big deals: Suyin and Dalybeth
Women who can philosophize and are also hot are my favorite. They are also my most resilient friends. I’ve known them since Martha Quinn was on Mtv and Fun Factory was all the rage.

Mr. Unokak, Kyle Kakuno, my muse, my traveling storyteller, my back pain buddy, my dear old friend, who is dearer, older and friendlier than anyone I know, besides the really really old folks who go to Kapahulu Mcdonalds every morning and do crossword puzzles and shit 4 coffee cups worth of old old colon aroma into the grimace room and out past Waikiki near the volleyball nets while discussing UH sports and the view–Please don’t die on me yet! We have many movies that we still have to talk about doing one day and then never end up doing!

Ladies and gentlemen: the diving, painting, cooking, good vibin’ viber of Palolo Valley, the Kimi.

Kimi, her sister Christy, my favorite bolo head friend Mike C, Leo and his wife Irish, the survivors, the peace warriors, still holding it down in Philly, with all their lil’ ones, all Big, Ginormous, humungo-rassic deals.

Leo and Irish [Swanky Bubbles, Philly]

The Kalo Patch Kids: Muah, Glo, Mikey, Kealoha, Minja: UNGOOGLABLY INFINITE DEALS.

I give my biggest points to those who can speak my language.

But I don’t want to make my favoritsm so obvious as to make others feel hurt.

Too late?

Shrug shoulders.

These are my kindred souls. What can I say? These are the people I will see in Amsterdam in a couple of days.

they are the winners of:

best conversations

best weird dancing in public places

best laughter with McCully Zippy’s plate lunch food coming through the nose at the wee wee hours of the night [wee wee must be said with a slight french accent]

best 4:00am Makapu’u lighthouse sunrise sessions, specifically after McCully Zippy’s sessions

best board game players

best freestylers*

best graphs on a napkin

best makers of lists which detail all the best things in life to list, including the best makers of the best makers

“If 10, 10; If no 10, no 10!” [KPK]

Me, Rocky, and the Mikey Wong* [Ho, Jason Scott Lee's house, New Years Eve, '06, Mikey Wong, freestylin' champ, it was apocalyptic dude]

Me and Glo, always connected, hi 5-ed for life bahz.

Kealoha: My brother from another Mother with the same last name WONG.

What is there to be said except that great minds think alike; the greatest minds conjure orgies together using math and poetry.

Tani-Lizzle and I downloading each other’s genius via foreheads [Jan '06, at the notorious WEEKEND in Kaimuki, days before Philly, My 35th B-DAY].

Holy wrinkled ball sack I’m going to be 36 in a month exactly.

Cheryl, Tani-Lizzle, Jem: Love love love you!

A$lice: whispers still loves you.

Me and the Matty P in London ‘03.

M. Piddy. Matty P. We all miss you. Stop being so Buddhist Monk, literally, and come to Amsterdam with me, again.

Back off Al Sharpton, this is my black friend tanisha, holler

quote of the day: “Bitch, I’m on a budget!”–Tanisha

The Philly crew: Kannon and Diana, Lil’ Pete and Alice, Gia, Special K and Toure and lil’ Parker, we shall party again very soon my friends, very soon, not that soon, actually, in all likelihood, who’re we kidding? I miss y’all, and of course…

CHIO, GN and Justice: thank you for everything– minus kicking me off of the show, I’m kidding, no I’m not, yes, of course I am, silly, I actually miss y’all now that I don’t have to see you every day! hehehe.

My new Jenn friends: Harmonie and Chad, hurry the fuck up and move to Seattle! Melissa Matsubara, the Ongs, the Kirby Musics, Beowulf and his Bulgarian wife Vanetta, Ellen and Jordan, all of them shall be bigger and bigger in our lives, yeah. Fuck yeah.

Jenn’s family: The Canadian mom who has eaten peanut butter banana sandwiches for 30 years straight, every single day, how can you not see the Bigness of her deal, love her; Mr. Hee, the slack key playing, bring your amp to my family party upon first meeting them and just plug in, mid-hand shakes and formal nice to meet y’alls, and then when asked what kind of beer you would like you answer whiskey, kind of guy– he’s the me in Jenn, of course I see the Big in his deal, and of course of course, Chris and Kyann: Jenn’s fat sis’ and lil’ nephew respectively, both PHAT DEALS.

Jenn and Mama Hee

Papa Hee and Kyann

There always comes a point where you have to stop naming people even though it’s tricky because you don’t want to face the whole, what are you saying, I’m not a big deal to you? Oh stop whining and just know the Bigiosity of your own deal. I love all my Big deals, even the ones I don’t have pictures for right now. There aren’t many Big Deals left, trust me. In fact, I even over shot a little here, but hey, come on, let’s keep it light, it’s fucking Christmas assholes.

My dog Mati: Big ears, Big deal.

This blog started out as being a thank you note to Curtis Kamiya for my big deal on my lil’ guitar. Thank you note, turned into blog, turned into Christmas newsletter turned into Russian novel but aren’t we all dying soon, I just wanted to say I love all you fuckers, sheesh. Whatever. Enough gayness. The point is, and this mostly to myself: know your big deals. Know the ones you have, the ones you are about to have. Know how big is big, and then make it bigger.

Life: Big Deal.
Death: Big Deal.

hi. My name is lil’ guitar and Curtis Kamiya is my real daddy.

Thank you Curtis Kamiya for reminding me of home. Thank you to all my Big deals.

No, I’ve told you, not you Jesus, you’ve caused enough trouble as it is.

Merry X-mas!

choose our own adventure AMSTERDAM coming in a couple days!

new old picture!

i’m making a wedding website for my iolani BFF, and she sent me this photo from last november, when ryan and i first met!!!

it’s a new old vegas first date photo!

approximate number of days we had known each other when this photo was taken… oh 2.5.

from left to right: harvard friend brian, philly friend justice, JENN!, RYAN!, iolani BFF kristi, iolani friend jasmine, iolani friend jon

yeaaaaa!!! i love seeing photos i don’t remember being in.

delusion [ryan]

12.12.07
Seattle, Washington
7:49a

Delusion
by Ryan Matsumoto

i can’t stop writing about my flaws
one of which
is my inability to stop writing about my flaws
but at least
i can’t stop

writing

“will it ever stop, yo, I don’t know” {Vanilla Ice}

maybe i’ll stop when
i’m flawless
which will be
delusion
the biggest flaw of all
nay
the only flaw

“I am Beowulf” {Beowulf}

sometimes I create psuedo-stanzas
to make like poetry
i put

spaces
then less words
whala

“The more I smoke, the smaller the feeling gets” {Notorious B.I.G.}

Show me the man
who is not deluded
and I will say
that is a fish tank
silly

“A conscious fruit fly would have to confront exactly the same difficulties, the same kind of insoluble problems as man.” {E.M. CIORAN}

growing old together (jenn)

i.
(we never picture growing old together.
there are no rocking chairs, no porches,
no grandchildren with our tired eyes,
no closets cluttered full of inside jokes,
shared gestures, and knowing looks
fading in boxes labeled years past.
there’s no nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake.)

how did i get here

needing someone to tell me how little i matter,
here with my heart, not a specimen of a heart,
but a heart, a breaking heart i want to throw up
through my speechless mouth–
my throat becomes lava,
molting
organ after organ
mistake after mistake

let my insides match the empty i feel.

i know

i’m a 12 year old girl playing this old paradigm house.
toying with her insecurity collection,
her shadow box of sadnesses.

i want the whole world’s sympathy in my hands.

(i hate this girl.)

(i check the light switch.)

how did i get here

taking my own placebo on an empty stomach
in doses of cardio, calories, worries.
wishing i had a control of myself
just to see how far i’ve deviated.

how did i get here

walking past memorials
knowing i am not moment-to-moment
play-by-play
do-or-die
philosophy.
but minutiae,
lists of consciousness,
the compilation of all my fears and failures.

i have loved
more this year
than i have ever loved,
and cried
more than i have ever cried.

my cry is i cannot change this.
my cry is i am surviving.
my cry is thank god
i can finally feel again.

ii.
it’s winter early on my skin
this is not what i want to write
i hate my head songs
quarter, half, whole words,
measures and measures of melancholy.

honey,

we are not victims
we are just tired
both of us
from fighting this war on existence,
a war we were drafted into circa birth
with our footprints.

you and i will never be names carved into stone
towering above a better off generation
but bones sewn into the earth
a place for weeds and time to take over.

honey,

my favorite moments are when you break
and i break
and we are reassembled
parts of me in parts of you
your sorry lodged somewhere deep in my abdomen
and my panic, tendons tangled through your fingers:

when we touch
i feel myself reaching for me through you.

honey,

every day is november 17th
and i’m running off that first plane
the burnt smell of bulgaria
seeped into my hair
in your new arms
i love myself again.
our first drive home
your single finger pressed morse code
secrets into my thigh
we were right to be afraid

honey,

we connected harder on paper
than anyone, you said
and that was something.
i am your favorite writer,
the worst exister,
locked in a self-destructible box
welded together from scraps of hot iron hurt
over 28 years of oversensitivity
sleeplessness and want want want–
my own impenetrable, flawless patchwork

(my mom, she gave me the patterns.)

i crawled in; i still have to live.

remember last year,
we promised to go dysfunctioneering together.
we pulled each other out of twin depressions
yours, a box, mine, a country.
we bought flashlights and held hands,
if hands were stanzas,
lyrics, and prose pacing across our pages.

(alliteration, it happens.)

honey,

when you said russian dolls i swooned
you told me stop trusting lovelessness,
printed my words onto your aorta
moved into my poetry,
painted the walls, even.

we once said: look how much we have been through
before we have even been through anything.

honey,

you could not
give me more
treat me better
love me more
than i love you
but sadness–
i breathe it through
these lungs, these porous wings for living.

if i could just take off
the anchor of my body.

i know you understand.

but i want it out.
i do.

put me down

with anesthetic songs
freestyled from your guitar
the ones that neverend
and sing them louder
than the most love-deaf voice
in my head.

put me down.

give me a life change operation.
i want to wake up with new
breasts and a new paradigm
my grey matter transplanted,
hope transfused through
your organs, mine.

put me down,
put me down.

iii.
all this is not what i want to write.
but you’re right, it’s easy
making pain pretty, alliterated and
packaged without the preservatives–
we pass an empty box back and forth
stuffing ourselves with
the smallest morsels of our panic
and inedible crumbs of our problems.

i’ve learned that today’s devastations
are tomorrow’s last laughs.

i’ve learned that my mind is not my mind.

i’ve learned that i am not the sum of what i am not.

i’ve learned that i forget days like today
beautiful days where we laughed
believed
we can do this:

drive, love, be.

i know my brain well enough to know
it empties the wrong cache, always
we are lovers,
best friends
and family.

i just forget; i’m lucky.

we are so much more than this poem,
than the letters that brought us here
into this motel room in cleveland,
another friend’s bedroom in milwaukee,
a flooded basement apartment in seattle.
let’s wake up tomorrow
be on the same team
cheer for each other
and i’ll sip from your coffee
because all i ever wanted to do
before i met you
when i was there and not here,
before i knew how to not be right for you
and the wrong things to never say,
before you knew how afraid i was
of asking for direction,
was sip from your coffee.

iv.
we never picture growing old together
because we don’t want a life
where we live to be 80,
and each year adds new failures of the heart and mind,
where each year gained is a decade lost
where you become right all along:

who are we without our memories

sacks of cells
bodies without dreams
shells left behind by the tides
and always, always still a roar
from the best time of our lives—which was a day—which was five years—
which was enough, enough life for a lifetime.

v.
how did we get here

into these decaying bodies,
panicked lives,
and folding corners.

i know: stop asking how. look forward. trust you.

there is so much in me i cannot begin to give you;
it’s already yours, owned, lived–
we are
we are already old together.

The Non-Writers Strike [Ryan]

We have no guild. We have no line to not cross. We are guild-free and lineless.

We are filled with words we are about to say.

We are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of about-to-be writers, who have no writing jobs to strike from yet.

We are the non-writers of America, god bless our little unpaid hearts.

We are the insomniac nation of bloggers and napkin doodlers, all writing our soon-to-be classic novels and screenplays on yellow pads and back of hands in between community college classes and graveyard shifts at the Y– We are hungry.

We live in exile, in coffee shops, in basements, under trees, under god, invisible, with liberty and justice and other kinds of fiction, in bookstores, in hallways, in unmatching socks, with our moms, behind cash registers and humongous steering wheels, in cubicles, on feet, in diners, in bars, in 4/4 time, insane, in vain for your love, in between jobs, in between in betweens, in between the cyber-ghettos of myspace and facebook, behind our faces and books, our favorite movies and pictures of beer drinking, there we are, about to explode, trying not to, trying to think of unsexy things like our low self esteems making out with our minimum wages, with neither of them wearing French maid outfits, fixated on our failures, in order to not blow our word wads too soon, masturbating our masterpieces in front of the few friends we feel comfortable enough with to just have our participles out there, dangling, so freely, our run ons running down our feeble knee-shaking legs, finales fragmented, abusing our alliterations again and again, because we’re a bit bashful, and a bit deluded, a bit tricked into thinking that we’re not ready, worthy, or smart enough to take over the entire universe with our mouths, pens, keyboards, fists, Tourettes, and pure luck, but we’re wrong, so very, very wrong, because we are indeed smart enough, most of us anyway, except the few who aren’t, oh who really knows, I do, we are, smart. enough.

We are one step away from actually writing something.

We are one step away from greatness– one long, seemingly unreachable step, but one step nevertheless– we love that nevertheless is one word.

And while we non-writers identify with the writers who are on strike in Hollywood, in that both of us are temporarily wordless and want more money, we can’t help but to be confronted by the obvious paradoxical nature of our subtle but huge difference: writers write for money, and non-writers write for non-money. And non-money sucks ass. We write for sanity. We write because we’re lonely and find editing our own words at 2 in the morning the only way to talk to someone who’ll really listen. We write because we’re scared. We write to find friends. We write because the painkillers are wearing off. Because they just started to work. We write because we believe, somewhere, deep inside the nooks, but most likely the crannies, of our dark roasted minds, that there is that collection of words, that html of the human soul, that combination lock to our everything, which can set us all free, and also feed us and send us to Vegas occasionally.

We write because we want to become writers.

We write because the revolution will not be televised, it’ll be uploaded.

We write because 12, 000 Hollywood writers just said If we don’t, who will, and we say we will, we will, rock you, Mr. I wrote several screenplays which have raked in millions of dollars of which I only get a few million, boo hoo, but now I need more because I forgot what it was like to dream of simply writing for a living one day, because I was already writing for a living, but chose to take it all for granted, and write only on wooden signs with way less space and no god dammed money, because in fact, what I am really saying to the non-writers of the world by striking is that there are no other writers out there, when in fact we are indeed out there, so very out there, and so we will, Mr. writer striker guy, continue to be out there, writing in your stead, while you walk around in circles, which is really like going up and down a hill, manifesting the obvious metaphor of your Sisyphean existence– only your boulder is the weight of your own ego, holler.

We are the Mexicans coming in to take your jobs.

Yo quiero el joborooni.

We’re cheaper, we work harder, and we can drink lots o’ tequila.

Today, We, the non-writers of America are striking from non-writing. argh. We are finished with the unfinished. grrr. We are through being not through. yodel.

Action may speak louder than words, but words speak louder than non-words, which are relatively way, way quieter than action, to the point where action is almost too loud, distorted even.

Nevertheless, We shall action our words, which is louder than just action by itself, and considerably louder than a cacophony of non-words.

We are your new Heroes.
We are your House.
We are Lost.
We are Weeds.
We are Real Time.
We are Late Late Night.
We are 2 1/2 men.
We are Bionic Women.
We are young– heartache to heartache– We stand [Pat Benatar]
We are Scrubs.
We are Bones.
We are Smarter than a 5th Grader, dammit.
We are the next American Idol writer.

We shall not cross the line of non-writing ever again.

Hell no, we won’t non-write , says our cumbersome mnemonic device picket sign.

We are the last non-writers on earth. We are Legend.