Dance of Unemployment

Lampshade, spigot, and the always challenging egg carton. (jenn)

For those of you who are inexplicably not on Myspace, this is my latest About Me:

Last New Year’s I was in Bulgaria, in bed by 10, force-spooning Matilda, both of us as close as possible to the space heater without risking accidental immolation, both of us drifting, waking, drifting to fireworks shaking intermittent street and sky corners.

It was me and Mati versus Bulgaria.

I missed Ryan.

Missed is such a little word.

America was my foreign country.

This New Year’s I was in Amsterdam, with Ryan, two bodies compacted by a mass of millions in Dam Square’s midnight revelry. It was a one-night war, complete with fires, bombs, hookers, and the innocent deaths of women and children.

It was every drunk man versus himself.

I held onto Ryan for dear life. He held me back.

We’d survived a year. A Myspace love story turned exciting social experiment turned normal/dysfunctional relationship turned dream turned blog turned best experience of my life.

You can hate me. Ryan gave me all of 07 to find myself. I could read, write, wander and sleep all day. He loved my bitch as much as I love my bitch. He let us live in an orange, blue, green, red walled wonderland. He ate my veggie dishes and said they were “surprisingly edible.” He showed me my favorite movies I’d never seen. He let me binge shop on Amazon, filling our walls with all the words we’d get to. He took my friends out for phenomenal wine-drenched meals. He let me out of my one woman Panopticon. In 07, Ryan brought me back from Bulgaria, took me to Hawaii, Chicago, Boston, Maryland, Milwaukee, Montana, Idaho, Seattle, all roads in between. And then the place of all places: Amsterdam.

We are on our way, we are still going, we are there.

He showed me a better way of living.

Less berate self, more destroy all concept of self.

Less wallow, more woo hoo.

Less less, more more.

He was patient with me. Last year I became an Olympic-level javelin throwerist of raw emotion. The world was my Target logo. I contained myself in Bulgaria, for two and a half years building my arsenal of injustices, of things I Couldn’t Change, of terrible voices in my head, all of which spoke Bulgarian. I misinterpreted. I needed my own translator. I came back home, a weapon of mass self-destruction. I hurled everything back at the world, which was me, which was everyone, which was Ryan holding my hands and saying: shh.

I don’t do shh.

I know, that’s why I’m telling you to shh.

Today, January 22, 2008, I live in Seattle, and by live, I mean I have paused here, a parenthesis in time, a place between places.

Today, I’ve been thinking about how we are always looking back, judging ourselves using a biased scoring system that offers points for where you are now in comparison to where you’ve been, judging you now against the hypothetical you tomorrow, where you’ve perhaps reached, or surpassed, your potential.

But what is potential, and who gave it to me? Who set the bar? Who keeps raising it? Is it my own bastard left hand? Is it my parents? Friends and their tacit employment that says, I may hate my life but at least I have a fantastic benefits package! What’s fantastic?

Why does everyone think carpe diem was so last year?

I don’t know many people living up to their potential.

Did 50 cent surpass his?

I don’t know him.

Will we know when we are there? Frolicking in Fulfilled Potential Land?

Ryan says I am an amazing person waiting to happen.

Who’s in front of me?

Why she taking so long?

Ryan says we should always dance in line. Then we’re not waiting, we’re dancing.

I’ll be so caught up in my running-man-cabbage-patch combo that all lines will disappear. Lines I’ve drawn between myself and everyone else, a chalk outline against the sky. I’m alive, I’m alive, watch me as I do the hustle.

Most people I know are heading toward their potential, as though it is at the end of a one way staircase you have to climb while rolling a well-greased boulder that’s been chiseled into the shape of a rhombus. Every year, you flip yourself over to your side, put in your time, pay your dues, earn your equity, get promoted to slave sr., and then get excited when you’re named slave sr. of the month.

I just have a short attention span, sometimes I

All I really want to do with my life is write about it.

I used to pencil Writer of self-absorbed non-fiction in the form of freely associated ramblings into the career multiple choice every few years. Now I’m engraving it.

So here I am in 08, standing on the sidelines of my life–I see everything, I hear Ryan singing Janet Jackson into Sting into Sade. It’s Saturday morning in Seattle, I’m warmed up, there are fleece vest wearers playing frisbee at the park across the street, all wearing some combination of the colors earth green, grey, black and khaki. One city, so many shades of khaki. We’ve decide they’re gay, a gay Saturday morning Seattle Frisbee club. Ryan’s been standing at the bay window with his balls out to see if anyone looks and reveals themselves as gay.

This is Saturday morning.

Some days I play, sliding into home naked on a yellow-yellow slip and slide, traveling with the ball and getting away with it, leaping off the high board and busting out inanimate object poses all the way down.

Lampshade

spigot

and the always challenging egg carton.

I am not here to race.

Still, I run and I am every run: I am 20 listening to Dar Williams, Tori Amos, Dave Matthews Band, Tom Petty on my mixed tape learning to jog along the Charles River; I am 21 along Mission Bay, Michelle Branch in my Discman, past mast after mast lining the shore, a row of stiff necks, leaning with the wind; I am 24 running with Dr. Boyfriend, looping Hawaii Kai Drive the night before I leave our life and begin mine; I am 26, on hour three of marathon training, chasing horse carts in the early morning white of Bulgaria to Smack my, passing them with Bitch up; I am 27, chasing Mati in empty Dupnitza hills, iPod shuffling drum and bass, Outkast, Natasha Bedingfield, Britney, Nelly Furtado, N.E.R.D; I am 28, along the Schuylkill, sprinting into the sun down wonder of my new life, Ryan. Ryan, waiting for me at the art museum to hand me water, an apple. To take me home.

Every step I have taken, I have taken.

Different shoes, same legs.

I write about my life because it is what I know most and least.

Today, I am beading my memories, gently dropping my little yesterdays onto an invisible string of identity, random patterns: red I am in love, black I am down, blue I can’t, white I am new, lavender I am dream, red, red, red, lavender, black, blueblackblue, white. I’ll wear this everywhere–a friendship bracelet, a lucky charm, something beautiful to pass onto myself when I’m gone.

This year, I will write about what I love.

And I love.

I love homemade meals with friends, wine, laughter, silliness over politics, books over bestsellers, tofu over non-tofu, dancing to 80s music over sitting to 80s music, bros before hos, my bitch over your bitch, climbing over hiking, Myspace over Facebook, outdoor markets over supermarkets, cluttered used book stores over over-lit chains that charge for wireless with books on weight loss and financial planning at the front door.

I love coffeshop marathons. Soy cappuccino with cinnamon is my new soy chai.

I love new old friends, old new friends, people I have everything or nothing in common with. I love waking Ryan up in the middle of the night with my hysterical laugher, as I read Steve Martin or Woody Allen or Ryan Matsumoto. I love laughter over the universal hand gesture for I’m going to vomit.

I love believing in other people. I love believing in other people believing in me.

I love Ryan asking if I want to watch a movie at night and then falling asleep five minutes in. Or, on a good night, six minutes.

I love sake bombs.

I love when I’m mixing veggie burgers from scratch as Ryan’s ground cow lump sizzles and bleeds, and he looks over my shoulder at my wholesome goodness and says, “God, that looks disgusting.”

I love that my sister lets me use her as material for my demented humor.

I love greeting cards as short stories.

I love the art of my friends.

I love the patient, bottomless sustenance from my parents.

I love thumb-holes in long-sleeved thermal shirts.

I love I love lists.

I love having more favorites than I could ever list.

I love I am chains.

I am nobody. I am ambien. I am on both sides of the mirror. I am through the looking glass. I am third person plural. I am Saturn returning. I am mantra. I am mantra. I am palm, I am reader. I am mispronounced French word. I am mise en place. I am standing on the edge of the sky. I am tag, I am it. I am rubber, I am glue. I am countdown. I am channeling. I am cable access. I am Lifetime movie. I am remote. I am control.

I am switching the channel.

I am spin cycle.

I am a circle.

I am holding myself together.

THANKS FOR NOTHING HARVARD (jenn)

Some park by our house, Seattle

Time: 11:40pm
Setting: In car outside public library, stealing free wireless
Mood: Brr

When someone says: you’re slacking on the blog, I like to take it as a compliment, as in, wow Hee, you are so gifted and dynamic, I wish you would blog every day!

Yes! Then I shall try to blog every day!

Then another someone might say: shiiit girl, I’m totally behind, your shit is just so fucking heavy, you and Ryan, it’s not like I can skim your words.

Yes! Then I shall not blog every day!

Occasionally a “friend” calls to catch up, and hypothetically asks about my Christmas. After I answer, said person says in shocked manner: you went to Amsterdam?!! Dumbass, I respond, don’t you read my motherfucking blog? I may feel very insulted because I think all my friends ought to be as interested in me as I am. If you had a blog, I could say, I would read it religiously. In other words, if you had a blog, it’d be really boring, and that’s why you don’t have one. Your comeback might be: at least I can afford a sailboat with my oodles of moola, and I might say, who the fuck says oodles of moola? You, friend, might say I would never say that–you, Hee, make other people sound like douchebags in your blog to make yourself look smarter, and I might ask, did it work?, and you’d concede: yes, good game.

I haven’t not been blogging because I resolved to never use the a-word again in my last entry, but because I’ve been trying to write pieces that will hopefully one day end up in MONEY, since all of you freeloaders read me for free. I didn’t get the ‘zines with homeless teens job at the YWCA–THANKS FOR NOTHING HARVARD–and every time I open the Sunday classifieds or browse Craigslist for hours, nothing sends my heart even slightly a’twitter. This world of employment is just not for me! I need to freelance. It’s the only job that has the word free in it, which subliminally is very satisfying. Right now, our life is perfect. Ryan and I wake up, write pieces that have cute orange end buoys bobbing on the horizon, scribble down parts of Big Pieces, compose absurd and brilliant songs, eat in, use Mati as an excuse to go to Marymoor dog park and laugh at dogs and their people, walk down to Chinatown, drive to the Seattle café of the day, park outside the library and use the free wireless, read our brains out, make fucking awesome videos using the simplest Mac software imaginable, and try to see how little money we can spend going out while having the best time ever.

Sample weekend, last:

Thursday Night—Chinatown karaoke with Big Will—definitely best time ever, but money was spent.

Friday Night—Ryan falls asleep at 7, mid-Breach, both of us sideways on our free loveseat made for one normal sized person. I spend the rest of the night making love to my computer screen, and by making love, I mean writing. A cheap date if I ever saw one!

Saturday Night—Dancing to 80s classics such as “Beat It,” with Ellen and Jordan at Buddha Bar. Ryan does a brilliant impromptu duet dance with an equally insane white woman of advanced age who was either a mom with a mission, the wife of a biker-man, or my fourth grade teacher. It was hard to pinpoint her personality based on her grand jetés. She grabs Ryan’s balls and gives him the come hither finger all night. Ryan tries to pretend he’s with me so she’ll stop groping him. Nice try, stranger.

Best time ever!!!

Sunday Night—Comedy Underground to watch Paul Ogata. We pretend we’re his crew and since we’re Asian the scenario is plausible and this gets us in for free. I laugh so hard I snort brain matter out of my nose. Best time ever!!!

In conclusion, we had three best nights ever for the price of one.

Reduce, Reuse, Reblog

I wrote the following piece in my old website/blog, but since way more new people read this blog, especially now that Ryan’s ass is heavily featured, I am re-posting it, mainly in the hopes that someone will send it to someone who will send it to someone, and it will become chain blog-mail. In a week it will come back to me, telling me I have to send it to 7 people in order to have my wish come true, which was to have this letter turn into chain mail, therefore it will have already become true, thus breaking the wish-cycle of chain letters. And somewhere out there will be that special person who opens me, a one-of-a-kind unbirthday present for all occasions, only to say: oh, she’s perfect! Here’s $100,000 a year to do just that!

P.S. I can be reached at: jennmeleana@mac.com

Cover Letter, My Ideal Job

Dear Future Employer:

(Which ideally would be me.)

Dear Self:

If I were to take all my experiences and mesh them into one occupational position–it would be to create an alternative treatment center for emotionally-disturbed private school-educated orphans of gypsy descent. There, I would teach them avant-garde writing in the form of stick figure portraiture, Surrealist photography in the form of aggressive napping, cardio kickboxing, imperfect veganism, and proper contraception implementation. I would treat them from their addictions to god, to family obligation, to morality as a washboard for our animal instincts, to guilt/blame, to ego, to refined sugars, to Myspace. This center would be in a former Communist nation where there would still only be two types of cheese–yellow and white. I’d recycle my diploma into toilet paper. Ivy League 2-ply.

The lesson of the day: degrees are for assholes.

Each morning, we would climb the metaphorical walls of our flimsy defenses before settling into our line-less Moleskins. Blank pages–we could go any way. After loosening the figure 8 knots of our old convictions, we’d rappel into philosophical caves, rooms of our own, walls padded with the insulation of our old bullshit, writing character sketches for our self of the day. At recess, we’d have a pep rally, cheering on our own genius ideas.

“G-E-N-I-U-S! Gooooo Genius!!!”

At lunch, we’d photograph trees, bury first drafts in self-destructing time capsules, invent ten new ways to eat pumpkin, stuff kaleidoscopes with fortune cookie fortunes, laugh at the distortions, the possibilities, laugh at our pasts which we’ve pulled from our mind like a loose shirt thread and re-woven into a quilt large enough to cover our cold feet. At night, we’d reclaim constellations, snip every imaginary line connecting memories to fear, expectation to fear, preservation to fear. Cassiopeia into The Persistence of Memory. The Big Dipper into Guernica. We’d praise the sky as a figment of our gorgeous imaginations. We’d be as endless as we wanted to be. We’d take our fears, write them on gold origami paper, folding each into 1,000 cranes, into one crane in the shape of a kite, and fly our fears past the point of control, and let them go, let them all go.

And then we’d be free for the first time in our lives.

FINIS

I mean, c’mon already. I am awesome. Hire me.

My most productive hours are between the hours of 12 and 4 am, I need really good health insurance, a company car or bike would be SO COOL, can my dog come?, I cook a mean pumpkin bread, do I really have to be present physically every day?, I think having the option to work from a park or cafe or hey, my living room– would be fantastic, and gym membership as a corporate benefit, hey, I’ll take it!

jennmeleana@mac.com

In the meantime, enjoy our latest photos from the lovely Pacific Northwest!

blogggity blog blog [ryan]

1.22.08
Zeitgeist Cafe, Seattle, WA.
6:24p

i’ve been writing something else lately, ok, look, I’ve cheated on you blog. what can i say? i’ve been writing all night and I didn’t even think of you, I’m sorry, these things hurt me as much as they do you, please, try to understand that at least; that we’re together on this, that we’re both in some way hurt, somehow effected, by this fact of writing infidelity that has allegedly occurred between us, assuming, that is, that your version of infidelity includes [enter sarcastic nasally voice] “writing something that is not for thee one and only Mrs. Bloggerooni here, Mrs. I should have all the words, all the revelations, the epiphanies, the pseudo-epiphanies, and then the real pseudo-epiphanies of Ryan, um, myself, this here author”, um, hello, that is like, so retarded, to think, that I would only write for you, you blog, you, fricken, um, blog, I mean, you’re crazy to assume that I would only write, only love, only this, only that, only anything for anything; which, I figure is very safe to assume that you assume, knowing you, you with your overly used mac photos, like fucking what– it’s not the most obvious thing in the world that you are the bi-product of amateur mac users, overly happy mac abusers, overly anxious to abuse the abuser-friendly mac software– ooh, how artistic, you fucking picked “comic book” for your mac photo booth camera shoot, again, how unique and individual you are, not, and then there’s that thing you have, that unexplainable love, that so-called unexplainable love of Frankfurt Germany, even though you were only there once, for two hours, on a lay over, and you didn’t even leave the airport, Jesus you make me sick sometimes blog, you with your daily nagging about it’s been 3 days since you’ve been posted upon:

[a re-enactment]
nagging blog: I’m like a plant, you gotta water me dude, go, get up, water, water your blog slash plant dude, it’s a metaphor, don’t you see?
innocent victim who has become exhausted from the constant nagging blog[me]: yes, I get the metaphor, blog slash plant, I’m exhausted.

But blog, you must try to understand, that metaphorically, you, to me, are like puppetry in the context of Being John Malkovich, in the sense of, sure, there is much artistic value to be gleaned from the art of puppetry, but it’s hard to get laid, and or make money–which then further complicates the already difficult getting laid situation–not that I need to get laid, but it’s just a metaphor you see [speaking of reminding one another of what is and what isn’t a metaphor, yes, you heard me through the parenthesis, I put it in here for it's subtle jab effect], I’m just saying, that while we all have our hobbies: our puppetry, and even yes, don’t shake your blog head at me, even our blogs, that that doesn’t necessarily mean… I can see you making those silly blog finger gestures and I don’t think that’s reflecting too well on your overall… alright that’s it, that was last straw, I know what that means you no good 2 dimensional screen saver with only a few kudos sprinkled about you, ok, fine, sure, I must give you that, even now while I insult you, I mustn’t go overboard and take away the kudos that you have indeed earned, not to mention quite a few friendly comments, this is true, I do apologize for not saying something earlier about those very true and nice things about you, I just, well, perhaps I may have been a bit defensive, I think… I’m sure I must have come at you in the beginning of this blog, blog, in a sort of accusatory way, in a crazy spontaneous blog flog of sorts, one might say, if they enjoyed making things easier to remember, let’s say, for instance, that’s just one example, but I shouldn’t have been so on edge, saying that it was safe to assume that you would assume the worst, insofar as the alleged writing infidelity was concerned, but that perhaps it was all just in my own head, a sort of projection and denial, as psychologists would blah blah blah, um, I just wanted to blog on you about why I wasn’t blogging, ok blog, bloggity blog blog, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I’m just trying to get paid bitch, ok, is that so bad, I’m just trying to let the world pay me for my brilliance, sheesh, is that so wrong, can’t a brother feed his holy mouth, his holy mouth sent from heaven, filled with wisdom and almighty shit, sheeeeeyit, can’t a brother just try to do this for a living, is all I’m saying, just please, try and understand blog, you’re like my puppetry in the context of Being John Malkovich and while it’s true, yes, I know, that in the movie, John Cusak’s character is able to finally use John Malkovich’s body, mind, and eventually fame to bring puppetry to the forefront of entertainment, eventually bringing in millions of dollars for Cusak/Malkovich, yes, I agree this all happened in the movie, but look around you blog, I don’t see no John Cusak, no John Malkovich, or anyone else, whose body, mind or fame we can use, to promote and therefore profit off of said metaphorical “puppetry” [blog], and I sure as hell don’t see no porthole behind no god dammed filing cabinet, on no god dammed 7 1/2 floor. but i love you blog. I do. believe it or not. it is true. but I will write on you when I am god dammed good and ready to write on you. and that is that. and you will love it. shutup. you will love it. now bite down on this while I publish you with no pictures.

oh, bulgaria. (jenn)

oh bulgaria orphanage, where a child essentially sucks his thumb off and the caretaker says, “he doesn’t seem sick to me.”

p.s. the video is an hour and a half… and heavy. even though the sally struthers-esque reporter is annoying, there is so much about this that is all too familiar–the completely fucked up director (POOL UMBRELLAS?!??) who should be locked up, rather than, you know, put in charge of caring for children; the mostly unsupervised and totally unstimulated kids, locked in at night, neglected past the bare minimum of physical needs; the tendency for staff to not see these institutionalized kids as living breathing feeling beings; the kids who would not be so fucked up if they were given proper treatment, therapies, etc… yadda yadda yadda. obviously the BBC is trying to tug on your compassion-for-vulnerable-children heart strings, but they don’t have to try too hard in this example.

i feel sorry for all children.

WWJHDIHDDA33? [ryan]

greenlake

cafe fiore, Seattle
1.14.08
4:08p

36.
36 years ago today, I big banged.
I began this death.
36 years:
3 cartons of a dozen 365’s.
I like to think of my years as eggs:
cracked.
rotten.
fluffy.
painted.
hidden.
runny.
chicken.
fertile.
balut.
scrambled.
over easy.
over hard.
sunny side up.
hard and boiled.
deviled.
beat.
whipped.
fried.
yellow centered.
shelled.
golden.

0 was rotten.

13 was cracked.

25 was sunny side up.

28 was deviled.

34 was both yellow centered and shelled.

36 is golden.

actual birth time:
5:53am.
1.13.72.
Honolulu, Hawaii.

I was born in the morning.

Senor Moose Cafe, Ballard

Went to Senor Cafe Moose yesterday for my 36th: 36 years on the planet celebrated with corn beef hash and a side order of crispy bacon, and way too much coffee. This is how 36 year old me parties. My whole life feels like one big expresso. 12 tripple shots of pure Colombian dark roast. I drink myself on an empty stomach and feel the burn. I jitter. I talk faster than sound. I am constantly buzzing. I want my side of moments burnt to the crisp too. I want them all well done. Breakfast is my favorite. It’s the starting over point. I love starting over over and over: starting a bran new day, on a bran new year, in a bran new brain, in a bran new cafe, in a bran new town, and meeting some bran new friends, in a bran new way.

I love a bran new bran news.

I was born in the morning.

“What is it that you’re eating—it looks really good”—[girl behind me watching me eat my bday breakfast]

“Corn beef hash. It is really good.”—[me]

I turn around and show her and her friends my hash–who are patiently waiting their turn to eat, as this cafe is packed as usual—and they all go wooooah. I said I know. We talk about Seattle, how we’re new here, and how we think the people here are so friendly; How they just talk to you, and how we love that.

“You know I heard about this one couple, on NPR or something, that went around randomly asking people if they could taste their food in various restaurants.” She said, according to the sociological experimenters, 97 percent of them said yes, and that over half of them even let them use their utensils! I love that she told me that. I love sociological experiment conversations randomly manifesting over third degree burnt hash on my birthday. These girls were happy. We were happy. This cafe was happy: the waitress, the people standing around waiting for 45 minutes just to eat salsa drenched omelets next to pictures of stigmata and chili peppers on the wall– even the omelets seemed happy to be eaten!

currently reading: Alice in Wonderland/Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I asked the happy waitress for an extra fork–there were only two left–one plastic, the other miniature [like a pitchfork for a one inch devil who only eats jellybeans]. We laughed at these two leftover differently sized and textured forks, as if it was cute that these two forks were finally getting a chance to play in the game after being red shirted all season. The waitress didn’t question my request–didn’t even give me the queer eye for the crazy Asian fork requesting guy look–she just handed them over. I don’t think she would have even batted an eye if I started shoveling my birthday cake [in the form of eggs and charred meat] into my mouth with all three forks–hungry hungry hippo style. Jenn gave me the queer eye; Did you drop your fork, she asked. I said no with a grin. I turned around in my breakfast bar stool and offered my new friends my mana from heaven and they dug in with ear to ears; irrepressible smiles make mouths wider for tasting life.

The girls who tasted my meat.

I love being reborn in the morning, every morning.

I’m 30 mother fucking 6, damn.

the torn corner of the Seattle Times Sunday paper I gave to them said:

here’s our blog:
chooseourownadventure.com
from the corn beef hash guy who is also Asian.

I just want to make every moment blog worthy; I just want to be continuously reborn since I’m almost dead.

I’m 3 years older than Jesus.

What would Jesus have done if he didn’t die at 33?

Let’s say the resurrection was canceled due to rain; say if it was held in Seattle instead of Jerusalem? What then?

Would he have traveled? Maybe a Cirque De Sole type show involving water walking and Leprosy healing– all sponsored by the eco-friendly Birkenstocks? Maybe he would have totally changed careers and surprised everyone with his secret love for wood carvings detailing powerful women in history and or endangered forest creatures, who knows.

WWJHDIHDDA33?
[What would Jesus have done if he didn't die at 33?]

…says my metaphorical bumper sticker.

expiring minds want to know.

You know that life changing shit is expected from you when you get 3 more years than the friggin messiah.

If the Prince of Peace can psuedo-salvage and ruin humanity simultaneously, all in the rather brief parenthesis of 33 years, then why can’t you?

And yet I feel absolutely no pressure.

Saturday night, hours before passing out my breakfast to strangers:

I go karaoke beer bowling with my new Seattle crew [see blog below, see us having fun and think how fun]

This is the second time I have met these fools, and already we were carving out history from Like a virgin lyrics and our need to fight, for our right, to party like old men denying their old manity. We are Beowulf. We can’t believe that anyone would choose to sing Michael Stipe in this Cathedral of stumbling and bud light drool, and so we did the honorable thing of schooling everybody up in that piece yo. They paid for all 36 of my beers. I didn’t count; everything counted. A girl from Turkey nearly out bowled all of us by closing her eyes and chucking her pink rock from between her legs wrecking ball style. We laughed lots. I bowled 2 strikes at the end by overcompensating way left–as I was gutterballing right all night. I would have hated to be one of my own balls– train tracked to the gutter forced to watch yourself pass by everything you’ve been aiming for. I was not one of my own balls though; I was a baller, a pimp, a god small g, ugh. I scored a hundred exactly. I felt a hundred. I love these people with all my 36ness. They treated me like old high school buddies would. They let me into their spontaneous Beastie Boy group even though everyone knows that Mike D is not Asian. They gave me a Belgian 40 ouncer with a home made ribbon on it. Our next target: live band karaoke. Seattle has no idea.

My whole family from Hawaii called me to wish me happy. Jenn made me a perfect steak, holy cow. We went to the dog park for 3 hours and sat. It was the most beautiful day we have seen here in Seattle yet. We were in Hawaii in Seattle. Mati still wouldn’t let other bitches smell her butt, but at least she tried to bully some chihuahuas; we call that socializing progress. Everything is perfect. I love Jenn more than Jesus loved Mary [mother or whore]. I usually hate birth; it reminds me that I was born and still have to pay rent. Not this time. Not now. Not on 36. 36 is golden.

beer, bowling, birthday, bitches!!!

saturday night
sunset bowl, ballard

beastie boys, represent

Happy Birthday Bowling!

happy 36!

family + free love seat = birthday bliss!

marymoor dog park, redmond

“honey, when i said i wanted to spend my birthday with a bunch of dirty bitches… the dog park was not exactly what i had in mind.” -ryan

Phantom People [ryan]

1.11.07
Seattle, Washington
3:46p

here’s what I believe right now:

we are all water, and full of electricity, and have no real purpose. we are bags of goop. we are not human. we are not making choices. we are not we. anyone who thinks we’re making decisions and have responsibilities to tend to is delusional. we are slaves to this body. we are body to this slavery. we must try to feel good, even if that means feeling bad first. we are retarded. it’s better to be inanimate object; to be shelves instead of selves–at least they don’t feel sad ever. and they don’t feel the loss of not being happy. they just are.

I am here in a coffee shop in Seattle, post Amsterdam, post the best time in my life, trying to keep my high. It’s mostly working. I’m only on coffee and books; mostly books. just finished smoking On the road, ahhhh. objects don’t have to try. we try. we try to not try. we prepare and make plans. we fail and re-prepare and make “better” plans that don’t work either. no one wants to come down. and so we climb. we try to stay afloat. we dream of levitation while clinging to the floor. we become more afraid. we grow older and convince ourselves that we are also getting wiser. most of us are not getting wiser. I’m 36 in 2 days. we get happy on special occasions, at weddings, on vacation, in the beginning of relationships, post promotions, but then we forget, come down, make excuses, see the problems all over again. we are retarded. we know the placebo effect. we know phantom arms. and yet we don’t make the connection; the connection that our entire lives are phantom arms. that we are the placebo effect. that we are phantom people. we watch the matrix and make the obvious analogies to ourselves and our unnecessary dramas but then we just leave them there in metaphor-land as if we are not actually in the actual matrix. we stumble. we stumble into the truth, all the time, but then we fall back upwards onto our high horses and ride off into the sunset of non truth. we try to duplicate that which did not come from us in the first place. we try to claim what is not ours. we channel by accident– the truth–and then think, we got it, when we don’t. we think we are the cause when we are the effect. we think–I felt it once, I know the secret to the universe–but then we laugh at ourselves thinking: No one could really know the truth. We doubt. We say things that sound truth-ish instead. But really we’re just trying to fit in. Things like: Well, no one really knows. True wisdom is saying you don’t know anything. I am truly wise since I don’t claim to know the truth. But what if we do? What if all know the truth? What if the truth is constantly evading us, because there is no us; and not because there is no truth? We get in our own way. We think something genius, and then immediately try to make it our own, trying to slap our name on it, trying to take credit for the genius, and then wham, it’s gone. Because we tried to drag the truth into a place that does not exist: our selves. That black hole of truth. Our identities. Our egos. We think we are, and therefore we are; but if we didn’t think we were? What then?

some people have written back to me: Yes Ryan, I too had a similar experience when I went to Amsterdam, a similar epiphany, a life changer. I too got high, felt good about life. Cool huh? As if we ‘re talking about seeing coldplay in concert.

I don’t think I’ve had the same experience as those people.

I’m not saying that mine was better, necessarily; I’m just saying that maybe it was.

i could be wrong.

i could be right though.

i could be right about being wrong.

i’m just saying that most people come down, and that maybe you don’t have to.

i’m saying most people just assume that you must come down, and then do.

and that I don’t assume this.

and that that was part of my high, is.

the part that said you don’t ever have to come down.

I’m still on that part; still high.

that it’s the idea itself–that we must come down—that eventually brings us down; and not some rule of “down” reality.

and that if I can continue to feel Amsterdam in my everyday blood–even at work, in between work–that maybe I found something better; or something better found me.

I think most people think of mountain top experiences as just that: experiences that take place on top of a mountain. and then they leave it there and return to work, to office parties and gossip, to rent and self-loathing. I have done this my whole life. I know this pendulum all too well. Every happy time I have ever had, has alway ended with reality, work, responsibilities, dread. even if it took a few weeks or months to finally get there, somehow, it got there. think about it. Every best time ever, that you’ve ever had– how did it end? Where are you now? Haven’t you just accepted that everyday life must involve some sort of sacrifice, some sort of work? That Monday through Friday is necessarily different from the weekends. that work is necessarily not as fun as vacation. that there are really high times, and then there are other times. I guess I am stream of conscious-ing this right now in order to not come down. I want to fight that voice in my head, in yours, that says, Amsterdam is just a trip. That everyone gets happy in Amsterdam–whoopteedoo– let’s see what happens to your happiness once your unemployment runs out, once you have to go back to work like the rest of us. I feel the crabs pulling. I feel the claustrophobia of the bucket. I feel the homeostasis of the world’s unhappiness surrounding me; the dynamics of osmosis; the diffusion of mediocrity trying to exchange goods with my cellular borders.

It’s no one’s fault.

It’s just voices; it’s just information; its just digital; it’s just humanity; it’s just carbon-based molecules vibrating; its just nothing; everything.

But I reject those files. those files of attempted equilibrium. those files which beg my return to reality; to sadness and routine. I delete them. I just say no to no. I say it’s Amsterdam everyday; it’s the weekend on Monday. If this was your experience when you had the best time of your life, then yes! I’m glad for us. Let us continue the tradition of traditionlessness! Let us not come back down ever!

Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in 3 weeks. He channeled it. I don’t think he is especially genius, like, intrinsically, or anything like that, as if he is some genetic mutation– but this book is genius. I think he stumbled into it. He became genius. He became genius by getting out of the way, by not trying to edit it to any ideal; to anything that might fit his identity, his ego. He let it flow. He became the jazz, the sweat, the vibrations– he disappeared. He disappeared and then reappeared everywhere as superhumanity. He was prism. He did more in 3 weeks than most do ever. His 3 weeks made more truth than entire generations made in entire generations. He was inspired by one of the main Characters [Neal Cassady] in this semi-autobiographical adventure across America and Mexico to just write it stream of consciousness style. To just channel it. To sax solo it. to drum beat it into the skins of an entire generation–into the world! this book reminds me to just get out of the way. to not be sculpted by everyone else’s reality, fears–to accept my digital nature, my unnatural nature, my “not my” nature. everything is not my. there is no my. I am everyone. to channel everyone else’s genius. to let go of everything I’ve been holding so that I can hold everything that cannot fit in my little grubby hands. To become part of the environment, always, since it is always that way anyway. to never have money problems, because it’s no fun to have them. to stop writing about dreaming and write while dreaming. to fuck yeah. to fuck yeah all day. once we try to package all this insanity, all this jazz, all this Amsterdam, this beauty, this genius– we seem to ruin every perfect part of it. we step outside the dream in order to describe it, never suspecting that dreams have their own language, their own beat, and to ignore that, is to ignore the dream itself. which is why we all nod and high 5 to wonderful sounding truths, but yet have no real happiness/power in our everyday lives. We say yes, yes, I agree, but then we are wide asleep, never realizing that we could be lucid if we wanted to. Even now as I write this to you, I am practicing getting out of the way. I am still editing a little, still a little here, still a little too aware of myself–but it’s unraveling, I am on my way out. I am un-loading. I am deleting my cookies. I am becoming phantom again. I am Marty Mcfly after his parents didn’t kiss; I am fading in my own family photo.

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.” [kerouac]

the secrets of the universe (jenn)

1.3.08
3:30pm
The Treehouse Coffeeshop
Collingswood, New Jersey

…said Tweedledum, “You know very well you’re not real.”

“I am real!” said Alice, and began to cry.

“You won’t make yourself a bit realler by crying, “ Tweedledee remarked: “there’s nothing to cry about.”

“If I wasn’t real,” Alice said—half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous—“I shouldn’t be able to cry.”

“I hope you don’t suppose those are real tears?” Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.

amsterdam multiple choice:

(a) leidesplein. the waterhole. live dutch honky tonk mixing with drunken laughter, with heat stirred smoke, with joker smiles, with throbbing lights, my head and heart throbbing faster, less and less th, more and more bb.

i cannot breathe/people smiling waving/if i look at them i will cry/i don’t want to exist.

(chorus: how did i get here.)

i see us crashing from a distance, i’m the accident, i’m driving by, there’s glass between us, i see them clearly, clustered, sing-shouting lyrics.

we match eyes.

i’m crushed.

i exist all over again.

i exist all over again and have to answer to life, have to half-feign half-interest, have to smooth my rage over with gritty sandpaper, smooth.

i don’t do smooth.

i’m so lonely. here. where we have gathered to not be lonely. where the waterhole is the saddest room in the world. where the slightest socializing nauseates me with the force of ten back-to-back tequila shots. i drink nothing. where 1000 dull cliché daggers stab me, gut and heart. 100 every time someone laughs. 100 every time the group wraps their arms over one other’s shoulders, swaying in a team huddle, a circle, a ring around my neck.

i cannot breathe, but i could cry for the rest of my life.

(who is this girl.)

misery indeed loves company. just not this company. misery watches joy and doubles over in pain, too shy to find a tram to step in front of, too tired to get up from this bar stool, where it’s easier to sit and cry and pretend this is just a bad trip, your existence.

i know i can take something, anything, and lift myself from this sadness, buoy on up to the surface, float and bob with everyone else in a sea of beer-flavored sweat and good vibes.

i know my sobriety is worse than any drug. i flood myself with stress. i drown from the inside out.

i decide not to turn things around.

i walk home alone.

i miss my friends.

they know what i mean when i say i can’t.

(ryan calls us enablers. we say this life shit is hard and nod. we sigh oh sadness and hole each other up in empty houses on flimsy stilts of empathetic words. we say what the fuck and high five. we say at least we get it and laugh with ourselves. we are eye-rollers. we are half-empty. we wear grey-colored contacts. we throw our individual angst into the kitty and save it for a sunny day. we keep collecting. we wouldn’t know a sunny day unless it gave us skin cancer. we exaggerate. we have life dysmorphia. we keep going.)

(b) the morning after, i find the things i’ve lost:

1. left contact, crumpled in the corner of eye—i thought i cried it out somewhere between honk and tonk.

2. hair elastic, the one that sent me again spinning again as i got ready–the vaguest reminder of how easily i lose the things that hold me together.

3. ryan, patient, forgiving, as loving as he has ever been, when i have been as crazy as i have ever been.

(c) i am not writing to write. i am writing to sweat out toxins. the smell of last night’s dismantling is the smell of bad and regretted sex, of pissing yourself.

i am writing to have myself to console.

(d) hi. my name is jenn. i am the anti-life of the party. invite me. i’ll bring my cheap platter of thinly sliced complaints. we’ll eat and eat and never be full. we’ll take shots of our own fermentation.

a toast: to one after another after another.

(e) i hate how heavy i become, when i close my eyes and an outside hand spills hate over me, a whole tanker of oil. i suffocate. all i see is all i cannot see, you know, now that i am covered in oil. and i know i’m close. i’m close to air, to hands, to another side, to my realer self. but the impossibility of opening one eye. the impossibility of having to face everything i hate (breathing, standing, etc., etc.). why. why do it. i want to drug myself back to sleep and try again tomorrow. i am always trying again, never getting to that place people aspire to when they try again. my try agains are loops, not points on x and y axes inclining me to the ideal self point. i zoom into my worst. i can’t see whether i’m on the up or down slant. just a point without context. i need the full picture. the monet. i need to be pointless.

i am good from far.

(i think i have ups and downs, but my life, graphed, printed, is just an average EKG stretched out over 28 years. i’m beating myself for nothing. this is what a life looks like.)

(f) i don’t want to be here, in this room, with these strangers, with the first snow of expectation shoveled down from the sky. we run outside, throw ourselves in it.

we make the shape of angels.

the next day, we want sun. it will be months. we will slip on our own ice. we will crack our own heads.

our angels, how quickly they evaporate.

no matter how many layers we shed for each other, what we see is not what we get.

(g) ryan brings me mega-dose pills of vitamin c and ginseng. i want a different memory of myself in amsterdam than crazy bar bawler, so i put on a new face and we all go to the sugar factory. i drink vodka and then i really drink vodka. we dance for hours to dj music spun in between incredible live jazz sets, the lead british singer’s voice, sultry and unsyllabic, thickening the air. we breath it in through our ears, exhale her through our fingertips.

we are only vibrations.

i am finally happy, the happy i only am when drunk enough to hold onto exact and whole moments, which seem endless and thrilling.

(h) what’s the color of the sky right now? –little boy to mom in the treehouse cafe

(i) i miss home. i don’t know where home is anymore. i miss mati. i miss solitude. i miss the feeling of not missing anything.

(j) ryan offers to buy us both tickets home early. even at my craziest, i am still chinese, cheap even with unemployment money not my own. i know tickets home early is not the answer.

we sit on a bench by our amsterdam apartment. ryan breathes for me. he is happy; he can help. he has given me everything and more:

-he supports my dreams
-he brings me to the best place in the world for christmas
-he supports our bitch mutt, takes her out for early morning poop
-he lets me sleep
-he has given me everything and more

we discuss theories for why i am losing all my shit:

theory #1: ryan is in the best mental space of his life and with no one to commiserate with i feel extra-super-lonely.

theory #2: ryan knows the secrets of the universe and i am jealous.

theory #3: i constantly convince myself of reasons to feel bad. really, i need to be happy for no reason, and here’s why:

(k) ryan is morning. he wakes me through the curtains. he sweeps hair from my face. he brings me back from nightmares with soft strokes, down my arms, down his guitar. he tells me there are no real nightmares. no one hates me. only i hate me. i can turn everything back into a dream. it’s just a switch. reset my own circuits. flow, light, be on and on.

(l) i wake up new. i hear the tram rushing past the bedroom window along kinkerstraat, the same tram i fell asleep to, the sound synesthetic to a movie wash out. ryan crawling into bed cross dissolves, our bodies curl into parenthesis, lucid dreaming begins. morning fades in twice—once, still dark, it could be 5, it could be 9. fade back into sleep. fade in again—bicycle bells, a steadier stream of cars, white sun. i get up. i feel exactly how i want to feel, make green tea, cream of wheat and soymilk, write four sentences i am satisfied with, read rats, wake up and up.

the rest of the day is perfect: a warm and bright afternoon wandering vondelpark, playing games of ice bocce with sticks and corks, trying to drop ice through ice. hawaiians—never underestimate our ability to amuse ourselves with a half-frozen park pond that is probably teeming with leptospirosis. locals look on as we would if we saw tourists picking rocks out of the ala wai, skipping them, and shrieking like five year olds at magic mountain.

the day passes, a simple daydream that glows with you into tomorrow even though the details are forgotten: which songs were sung, who said what about why, whose idea it was to climb the twice-rooted tree, slick with moss and cold.

we are twice rooted in each other, ryan and i.

we are the architects of our days.

we are (im)proving our own theories.

we are all of the above.

1.6.08
4:30am
the cave we call home
central district, seattle

Alice laughed, “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

1. hey, this is how not to suffer

(there is so much more to write about than my moods.

ryan on jenn as re-told by jenn as herself: i think my writing about how i act like an irrational psychopath excuses it, that molding my social retardation and sadness into something that sounds nice is a skill i value, and so i do it, blog and blog again. i write about how alone i feel, and a world of people relate.)

2. ergo, i feel less alone.

(really we’re just enabling each other’s bitterness. we take nothing away from my words beyond a sense that we all suffer similarly. i never say: hey, this is how not to suffer, and write about all the joy i experience. i sift content about how things really can change down to a fine dusting, flavoring my blogs with an imperceptible sweetness. mostly, i throw in handfuls of raw animal lard*. every single one of my myspace blogs is the same story, different day. oh i’m blue colored. oh i cry at house parties. oh i don’t belong in this world.

oh i am so fucking sick of oldself.)

(oh oldself.)

*example of something that disgusts me

3. vulnerability, hear me meow

(i try to get everyone on my “side” by shouting out the easy conundrums of being that i know i can get everyone to say AMEN! to.

me: isn’t it hard to date a person who talks a lot about philosophy?

world: AMEN!

me: isn’t it hard to change?

world: AMEN!

me: shouldn’t boyfriends never yell at you, no matter how rancid a psychopathic bitch you are being?

world: AMEN!

me: isn’t vegetarianism WAY better than non-vegetarianism?

world: amen?)

4. i am one with myself

(ryan says that by feeling deeply embarrassed about my psychotic self makes her real. instead, i must stop making her real. stop giving her my body. stop feeding her little gummy hatebears to gnaw on all day.)

5. so this is the last time

(the last time i blog about my life in crazyland. offering more and more case studies of myself for the masses about exactly what happened, using completely biased, post-hoc reasoning as to why i justifiably freaked out (chemical imbalance, hello?), so that i can avoid these things in the future. [crowds, areas with no immediately accessible exits, strangers of odd height, dentistry, male nurses, baroque-style buildings, leather couches, tomatoes off the vine.] i could tattoo a do not do list on my body memento style for the rest of my life, but all this does is make it all true. none of it is true if i don’t want it to be. it is all yesterday’s jenn.)

6. i have a fucking incredible life

(on paper, my facts do not suffer: born and raised in goddamned paradise, harvard, hapa, all limbs accounted four, athletic enough, smart enough, adventurous enough (?), 5’3” enough, not in financial debt, has best boyfriend ever, best bitch mutt ever, best friends ever, best family ever, best best ever.)

(these are the only truths worth believing.)

1.8.08
9:00am
zeitgeist coffee, seattle

in amsterdam

in amsterdam, we fell in love over and over again. ryan–during my worst “sober” trips, he was calm and kind, wrapping me in his new full embrace, an embrace that promised we were a locked safe, no one else knowing the combination (our shared dreams spelled backwards in hieroglyphic x language). he would stay by me, but stay afloat, and would not drown down to where i was, and if i just held on, and kept holding, he’d pull me somewhere safe, with words and laughter and better eyes.

we have been together almost all day of every day since we left philadelphia on november 1st. this traveling has made us a pack, a fixed family, synced systems with updated software.

(how romantic!)

this is the most true:

in amsterdam, we had the best moments i have ever had in my entire life.

amsterdam was watching birds trace the sky for hours on the roof of the science museum, talking, laughing, imprinting our bliss on each other.

amsterdam was our night of endless tribal-revival-hippy-free love style dancing at the rokerij to pure lover avi’s flutes and a drummer who could even play scissors and rubber ducks like a badass motherfucker, ryan singing with his new singer’s voice, kealoha slamming poetry, their beat boxing duets–a room of dutch people wondering if we were the audience or the show, wondering what we were on.

we were audience, we were the show. we were on happiness.

amsterdam was ryan and i standing on the edge of the ponds in vondelpark at night, seeing the sky reflected in the dark water, the black crooked branches of winter trees probing something bottomless, deeper than we could ever imagine. my stomach churned as though we could step off the muddy bank and into that void. our held hands kept us safe from stumbling, let us see the menacing infinite as breathtaking.

amsterdam was early evening biking through town, just the two of us, two days before we left, the city a well-lit amsterdam montage, a sitcom of our entire year together:

past the book store ryan found me in after we fought, our first few days in amsterdam, when we were still not sure we should be there, when there was too much cost-benefit analysis flooding our lagging heads. costs were high, and we weren’t. when ryan was old ryan, and jenn was old jenn, and old ryan said i’m going this way and old jenn said i’m not, walking forward while ryan turned back. i knew he had no idea where we were, how to get back without a map. without me. without his wallet that i had conveniently been holding.

later, on the third floor fiction aisle of a random bookstore, deeply apologetic jenn said

you found me.

and still uncertain ryan said

you’re so predictable.

two weeks later, peering through the closed dim windows, we laughed at ourselves, standing inside that silly bookstore, the day we tried to stir up a batch of the end of the world using ingredients that existed nowhere but inside our old rotten heads.

we moved on.

walking our bikes through crowds of giant dutch people, down the same once empty main streets we pedaled down in the middle of the night with mikey, hearing only the whir of wind in the tires, blurring past fashionable clothing stores we never went in and all the falafel places we did.

over the bridge where we bumped into keali’i reichel, who sang one of our favorite hawaiian songs. for those few minutes, we were warm, we were home.

the same bridge where we met the happiest bum in the whole fucking world.

past the shopping tunnel where the boys freestyled the witty commentary on everyone walking by song, and earned their first 20 cent euro coin.

past the many coffeeshops we read, wrote and smoked in, past the corner where ryan took me from hysterical sobbing to hysterical laughing, all with one line, a line i can’t remember, something absurd, something that made me certain you can turn moments and moods around, realizing i do choose to persist in my sadness, and a bad thought is just a bad drug. you, overdosing your system.

on that corner, cries of i can’t do this anymore turned into irresistible, irrepressible i can do this forever giggles, giggles that rose up and out of my heart into the collective hymn and hum of the world.

there was still so much of our journey left.

into the park where we all played that sunny afternoon with the frozen ponds, down the corridor of sloping trees, black on an orange grey sky, damp from invisible rain, laughing maniacally at the non sequitur squawk of ducks, hidden in the dark chocolate colored marsh, dinging our bike bells to pass by no one but our old selves, stopping at the twice-rooted tree, remembering it was all the best, and to never be misled by the wrong memories.

only the best times of your life will exist if you want them to.

amsterdam was meeting a cast of characters. realizing we were probably the same to everyone we met. our stories written into each other’s life lines. ‘til syndication and beyond. hawaiians in a foreign land, crazy-haired and ski-masked, poets and artists singing i want you to drop baby, drop baby, drop until ryan’s fingers froze, collecting a lifetime worth of stories, epiphanies, art, new laughters, new new.

the secrets of the universe.

it’s the year of the rat.

it’s the year of the fuck naming years. the year of living each day as a year. the year of last times. of first times. of all of it all of the time.

dear kealoha, minja, and mikey,

i’m sorry for being a crazy bitch whore cunt.

i wouldn’t want to do amsterdam with anyone else.

i just didn’t know it at the time.

a toast: to the year of many years.

to blogs that do not use the word angst, its synonyms, or angst dressed up in pretty frocks of any written form.

to i control the shit!!!!!

love!
jenn

dear ryan,

i love opening a book, seeing our double dog-eared pages, me speed reading to catch up, always one chapter, one theory behind.

thank you for waiting.

i love that you are smarter than everyone.

(p.s. i am not everyone.)

i love crawling into bed next to you, knocking ankles, whispering there’s no place like home, and knowing we’re already there.

(m) all of it, all of it,
jenn

together again!

together again [ryan]

Together again.

Mikey, Kealoha, Minja, Jenn, Ryan [Amsterdam, New Years Eve 'o7]

01.07.08
Seattle, Washington
1:08pm

Yes, it’s true. I had a life orgasm. My entire life came. Memories from 20 years ago shot up from my Reptilian. Memories I’ve never remembered before, were being remembered for the first time, again. My amygdala converted its usual stew of fear and aggression into a pure agape eros storge philia namastaying alive, staying alive, ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, out of body super fragile un-casual-istic XTC-ala-dose of neuro-gravy and poured it ever so gently over all of my bones. And it all happened whilst listening to Janet. Miss Jackson if you’re nasty. Penny from Goodtimes. Michael’s lil’ sister. The girl who married the guy from El DeBarge. The teenager who wore the unsexiest kneepads in the world during her Pleasure Principal video. The crazy bitch who said, “Let’s wait a while, before we go to far,” and inadvertently cock blocked a whole generation of dumb fucks who couldn’t convince their dates that Janet was Jehovah’s Witness and therefore those lyrics didn’t apply to them in quite the same way as they did to her and so to take off their god damned panties already. The innocent maiden who fell in love with the fat professor.

The woman who tried to breastfeed the world.

December 30th. Sunday night. Monday technically. 1:30am. 31st actually. It’s the eve. Thee eve. It’s thee about to grab the apple and eat from the tree of knowledge eve. It’s Eve eve. It’s the eve of everything new: the year, the world, the thee. ‘07 is barely breathing. Amsterdam, Holland. Outer space. Living room. Everyone’s already sleeping. I’m the opposite of sleeping. Hawaiian magic mushrooms, dark chocolate and pure THC in my head, nothing else. Everything else. It’s all legal here you judgers. The ice-o-later: That’s what they call the pure THC. I had just been ice-o-lated. They slept, I ice-o-lated. They went down, I went up. I used Willy Wonka’s elevator. It was made out of looking glass. I came all the way over here to get mushrooms that grow in cow shit in my hometown in Hawaii. It’s always the last place you look. Actually, I’ve never really looked at cow shit. I want to look now. I so want to look. I love cow shit right about now. Love. Cow. Shit. I think I love all shit because of this shit. I am brave new world. I am aldous and salvador eating paintbrushes with vincent. I’m fully madman at this point. I have no ears to cut. If I saw a pile of cow shit, nothing could stop me from face planting in it. I know it’d be metaphorical; I don’t care. Maybe that’s why Andy Warhol made purple cow wallpaper. Maybe that’s why the term holy cow. Maybe that’s why fungi is the plural of. I was super Mario and Luigi. I was wonder twin powers all by myself. I was activated: form of the space-time continuum in hush puppies and cotton candy hats. The space-time continuum hath many heads.

How do you explode quietly in a room full of sleeping friends?

How do you spontaneously combust and get nothing on the carpet?

I was only getting higher with each passing minute. The fucking trolleys passing outside my temporary Amsterdam home made funny little humming songs which were teabagging my funny bone in the face, over and over again, from somewhere so deep inside me that I had to wonder if my funny bone was indeed experiencing a growth spurt of cataclysmic proportions, not unlike a metaphorical Andre the giant, but in the form of a funny bone instead of a giant. I took the challenge. Laugh with all your might, I thought, but silently. Dance. Dance and stay still, move everything but my feet, I thought.

They were dreaming. I was dreaming.

Everyone’s dreaming.

The whole world: dreaming.

Ooh, grab the earphones, ooh, ooh, the fucking earphones, why didn’t I… fucking, wow, fuck, holy shit, the fucking earphones! I randomly pop the ipod on, and there is Janet. I immediately went to “Doesn’t really matter” as it was a reminder to me from way back when, that you could steal back memories and change your past, your life; your everything. Long story super short: I got sick of the song back in the day due to a break-up, and had to reclaim it, as it were, as a song of joy and not of ex-girlfriend darkness from the depths of the seventh circle in hell. And who doesn’t love the phrase “Doesn’t really matter” set to music? I was a friggin Tibetan monk in long john underwears: m&m’s in one hand, balls in the other. They both made friends with me. Nothing could stop this happiness. I was a train wreck made out of Chinese New Year style fireworks: my explosion, my destiny. The end is the best part. The death of it is the whole point. My whole life seemed so silly, sad– beautiful from this point.

Every tear trickled, tickled. Every sadness: joy. All of it a sick joke no longer sickening.

I cried laughed flew.

I cried laughed hugged surfed flew jumped ate drank swam slid.

I body bungee barreled.

I astrotransmigrated through fields of gold and shit.

It was officially New Year’s eve in Amsterdam, at only 1:30 in the god dammed morning, and I was bumping and grinding myself on mute in my own V.i.P. section of the Studio 54 in my mind.

Everyone else: dreamland.

We were all in the same place: the kitchen, outer space.

I felt that I knew everything, nothing. I felt the relief of having to be original, talented, genius–that it had all been said, including it has all been said. And that that was the best place to be. And that that was where I was. That I was always here. To not be afraid to sound a little hippie-ish when you write about this later, now. This may sound like shit to you; Yes, that’s where it grows my friend! Look no further, you’ve stepped right in it, congratulations! That the truth is everywhere; in pop songs, on cereal boxes. In cow shit; in politics. Inside. In inns. On wallpaper, in dinner conversations, behind closed eyes, doors. There it is.

Be happy for no reason.

Be happy for no reason and here’s why.

It’s all an illusion. Who cares if that is someone’s myspace quote, it’s the fucking truth. We’re dying. Fuck your socioeconomic bladder folks, let’s drink death together! I’ve already committed suicide: slow shutter suicide. I’m too pussy to actually hurt myself, I’ve decided it’s much more chic to just live happily ever after all the way ‘til death: slow shutter suicide. To blurring all the lines. To mixing stills with motion, to pointillism unpersonified. To fragments running on empty caverns of everything meaningless and therefore meaningful. To closing your eyes and seeing everything. To closing your eyes and realizing your unlonliest moment ever.

Enter: Together Again [Janet Jackson]

The harps. Those mother fucking harps. I feel I should say, In the beginning, there were the mother fucking harps.

Then Janet’s angelic voice:

There are times when I look above and beyond,
There are times when I feel your love around me baby,
I’ll never forget my baby…

The sound came from nowhere in particular, or at least that’s what it felt like, I couldn’t place it, didn’t care. It floated. I floated. Couldn’t feel the earplugs, my ears. Sound, body, mind: these things all meaningless now. I was speaking non-speak. I flew towards a starry night made out of under my eyelids. I stood in the kitchen, planted like I was ready to take the offensive foul with 2 seconds left on the clock, but invisible, so therefore fearless of losing my teeth, my mind, it was too late, it was all lost anyway. I was part of the ether now. I was Stardust. Stardust with eyebrows, which was also stardust. I was also instantly bored of everything I had ever said, written. I was ecstatic because of this newfound boredom—reborn. The words Ryan Matsumoto were double punch lines in my lifelong joke. I saw myself crying as a child, my dad scolding me for something, everything. I saw my Mizuno baseball glove being lost, again. I saw me getting kicked out of school, leagues, conversations, debates, everywhere. I saw me standing on cafeteria tables, pounding my chest, being the class clown, needing my lonely spot rubbed. I saw every body smiling laughing smiling laughing. I flew swam. I closed my eyes while closing my eyes. The sadness was only met with more happiness. I was never afraid of the sadness taking over. I somehow knew it was being sprinkled in with the overall happiness like cinnamon. A little dab will do ya. Taking over was taking over. I was Icarus in a Sunless sea of sky. It was the best feeling I have ever had by far. Nothing comes close to it except for the whole Amsterdam trip itself, which is an unfair comparison since one is a subset of the other. I was singing to myself in the form of Janet.

Everywhere I go, every smile I see,
I know you are there, smiling back at me.
Dancing in moonlight, I know you are free,
’cause I can see your star, shining down on me.

This meant it was all over. All pau. The nightmare had been met by the alarm clock; I could smell the coffee.

I was together again with myself.

I knew right then, that all my problems have always stemmed from that feeling of being lonely and afraid, and that I didn’t have to feel like that anymore. That happiness was always here, smiling back at me, always. Right here inside my mind. Happiness. Always. As much of it as I want, here it is, happiness, here, always accessible. Just close your eyes, or don’t. Just just. I just, we just, never notice. We, all of us: missing our breaths by breathing too hard, not enough. That if we were to feel this huge universal group hug which comes from ourselfless selves, that we would solve all of our problems. We would see that we have enough. We would feel our enoughs, in every moment.

Everything is Ha!

Ha: Hawaiian for Breath.

I don’t do drugs; I am drugs—Salvador Dali

I’ll take opiates over cortisol any day soccer mom. I’ll take a little THC over your squirts of anger and frustration O’ suit wearer, O’ portfolio manager. I’ll take space cakes over beer. I’ll take a handjob over vodka. I’ll take surfing over parenting. You take both? high 5 dude! That’s all you. I’ll take half soy over whole whole. And I’ll take mushrooms over sex, but not over space travel via Delorean. I’ll take death over life. I’ll take my time over the rush. I’ll take now over later. I’ll take taking over non-taking. I’ll take overwhelm over whelm.

I’ll take happiness over not happiness.

I love everyone.

I’m sorry if I scare you my loved ones, this is me. I am exploding; hold me. I’ve been exploding circa birth– I’m a supernova, who knew?

Oh just pretend I’ve had cancer this whole time, let’s dance, what d’ya say?

I’m almost 36; that’s a fucking long life according to medieval times.

My new t-shirt:

Be happy for no reason and here’s why:

And now…

Here’s almost every picture I took in Amsterdam shuffled to the song that breastfed me the truth in both soy and whole-i-ness forms, culminating the greatest moment of my entire 36 year long craptastic life:

Happy New.

from me, Jenn, Kealoha, Minja and Mikey.

chooseourownadventure.com

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