Beauty

I think back on my years.  To be completely honest, I’m not physically too old, but mentally I feel the strain of the years, forced to become old before my time.

Since my childhood in the 1980′s, I’ve traveled much, seen much, experienced even more at each momentary stop along my life.  The sands of time keep sifting through the hourglass, grain by grain, but to me it feels more like a single fluid strand, as oxymoronic as that may seem.  I see my life experience as a continual connected string of events, memories, occasions for laughter, moments for sadness, all coalescing together, unified despite all their imperfections.

And this world, even with all its flaws, is really a beautiful place.  Even though I’ve seen insurmountable happiness, cherished a love that was irreplaceable, and predicted my own downfalls, I still feel optimistic for the tomorrow.  The world keeps spinning, and each revolution seems to sling me higher into orbit, and it’ll be soon that I can escape this gravity.

I can almost taste the sweet elixir of bliss.  And though it feels that each time I get closer it pulls away from me like the sultry tease of the the burlesque dancer with her beads swaying, I know I’m near.  I see it like through the eyes of a child, wide and filled with wonder, sitting at the edge of my seat anticipating the next moment to come.  It’s things like this that force me to live.

It’s almost like standing on the pure white sands of Oʻahu, before plunging down into the warm amethyst waters of the reef.  Like gazing down from a 747 above the stratosphere on the thick hills of Andalusia, splashed deep with the vermilion and Indian yellow of the Fall.  How the long streamers sway-sway in the breeze around the streets of Rio, as the happy shouts and laughter fill every possible crevice during Carnival.  Two people distant in life but close in possibility, tracing fingertips across the Sierra night sky, each star along the way brightening as the dots connect together while the musky freshness of pine envelopes.  Or the hauntingly sweet tones of a Montagnard shaman’s song, the wind rustling through the bamboos joining him in solemn unity high in the mountains of Ratanakiri.

I believe in love.  Maybe not how the regular societal view sees it, but as a connection between life forces that surround us.  Every and each creature, even the inanimate objects such as the trees or the wind contributing to the greater whole.  I believe in love, for the sake of love itself.  The intensity of its energy that flows within us, the belief that tomorrow holds endless possibility.  How we build paths, though imperfect and broken, are still bridges toward eventual destiny.

And despite all my apparent cynicism, somewhere underneath it all I’m optimistic.  And still, the years wander on like a meandering stream, carving out its own path, leading towards the ocean.

The Struggle

The Sun lingers slightly along the horizon, as if it is waiting for a lost lover, before plunging the world into darkness.  Already I feel the coldness coming on.  Here, against this particular sand dune, I can see the entire Long Beach skyline sighing softly into the ocean breeze.

Tonight, I feel a bit odd inside.  The last few days have certainly been rough.  It’s this strange feeling.  I’m sad, but I don’t know why I’m so.  Perhaps it’s just one of these phases I go through occassionally.  I’m not sure.

In Life I define success as overcoming one’s insecurities and fears.  Attacking and conquering realistic and increasingly difficult goals.  In a sense, I’ve done much for myself towards this, or have I?

My cigarette hanging awkwardly off my lips, I take in another deep drag, rocking my head back before exhaling the remnants high into the air.  The smoke hangs about wistfully for a moment, as if it was unsure of its destiny, before dissipating into the air.

A big brother of mine told me a few days ago, that even though he’s 15 years older than me, he highly respects me for continually being able to wrestle with life.  Something about me being more experienced at my age than he ever was then.  How I’ve seen much, understood more, and always close my eyes and push forward.  But I’m not so sure.  I can only form an opinion on what I’ve done and what I’ve observed.

To be so relatively young, yet so successful in my career.  Admittedly for all my brains and high marks up until the end of high school, college never worked out for me the way I imagined it to.  I struggled through it, not because I didn’t understand the academics, but because I often was distracted with other things.  Sometimes I feel a bit ashamed being one of the top tier high school graduates, being accepted to some of the best universities, and then one day, waking up in Berkeley and deciding that I was just tired, and walking away.

And then there was business.  My mom, bless her, always remarked about how I could naturally cycle between being a fast talking salesman to being quiet and introspective, sometimes in the same sentence.  Yes… career.  Something that has given me so much materially, yet how I grew up, money wasn’t ever really valued by me how others might value it.  It’s a means to an end, nothing more.

I take a step back and think about it.  The only area in my life where I’ve utterly failed was in relationships.  Maybe I’m not cut out for these sorts of things.  I notice other ladies’ men, how they are like me… immersed in career, personal passions, always forcing themselves to be preoccupied with activities to soothe their restless souls.  Yet none of them, despite their success in career and passion, are really happy.

They are broken idealists.  They do things, act in certain ways with selflessness, but then are hurt when appreciation isn’t reciprocated.  But they never speak about it.  It’s this mouldering fire that can be so damaging.

The short and long relationships that only serve to solify cynicism.  The disappointments.  Is it strange that I don’t remember the last time I cried it all out?  Many don’t even remember as well.  We create these emotional blocks to save ourselves from future disappointment.

Then, they, like I, try to escape back to career and passion.  I see it in myself.  I hide my insecurities, my fears, my unrequited wants behind my career, my passion with Nature.  Work is an escape.  I purposely drown in so much daily stress and the fast-paced lifestyle of travel that I can’t spare a moment to think about problems.

It’s unhealthy.  I’m looking for such simple things in life.  But as such with many things, the simplest things are the hardest to attain.  And the worst part, is that I don’t know how to fix or conquer this battle.

I don’t even understand the deep conflict inside of me, but you will never catch me saying that out loud.  So I drop back to what I’ve known, because it’s comforting.

Simplicity

She was like a forest spirit, her hair wild in the wind.  Her legs cut through the wild mustard flowers, and the slinky stems part aside, accepting her presence.  I can hear her sharp laughter piercing through the quiet dew-laden air, still wet from the morning that still refuses to go.  Looking up, I startle a bit as she thrusts her face closer to mine, and then smile as I push her back gently with two fingers on her temple, wiping the caked dust off her face.

The fog creeps slowly along the ground, swirling into strange and fantastic shapes before melting back into nothingness.  I cup it and try to guide it, but it flows around my hands.  Here, it feels like a wonderland, steeped deep in mystery and possibility.

Grabbing my hand, she pulls me along like an eager child.  “Look at this J.!”  “Come over here!”  She reaches down in simple amazement of a flower hiding low along the ground, glowing iridescent in the early morning Sun.  I gently pluck it as she looks at me, perplexed.  Pushing back her hair behind her ear, I tuck it along her ear and take a step back.  We both burst out laughing.  She always used to give the warmest and most sincere of hugs.

I suppose the years do pile on our troubles, problems, random issues that often can’t be resolved without carving out a piece of ourselves.  And now, whenever I look at her I can’t help but remember the person she used to be.  Warm, endearing, open-hearted.  In her place, now all I see is a hollow shell.  Broken, nervous, jaded and brittle.  And I think to myself, “what a shame.”

Sometimes I think about how I can help.  We don’t see each other on the same simple levels anymore, but I see each relationship, each connection as me giving out a piece of my heart, whether I say so or not.  Perhaps sometimes the piece may be bigger than other times, but the intentions are still there.  But these things, whatever they may be, form who we are.  I can’t help her on her own struggles as much as I want to do so.

As we grow older, and out of our initial innocence, I feel the years caving in.  Our experiences shape us into who we are.  At least, I know for me, my current form is shaped heavily through what I’ve seen, heard, touched, and felt.  Perhaps after the responsibilities, struggles, and perplexities, I’m searching for not a better day, but a simpler one.  All I can hope for is the best, for me, and for others.  We mustn’t live in regret.

Superman

As time goes on, only in retrospect do I realize my mistakes, successes, decisions, what I did and what I didn’t do affects the future.

You see, when I was a lot younger, I felt like Superman.  It’s as if nothing could affect me from flying so high above it all.  Then there was the kryptonite, and I came crashing down.  In a way, I’m that flawed, Byronic hero.  A Batman, Iron Man, what have you.  I have these deeply ingrained issues that shape my life the way it is.  Real flaws that I’ve at times neglected attention to.  Things that trouble me and push me into disconnect mode.  Shutting down, mulling over the past, deeply conflicted in both my good and bad decisions.

Yet in this I’m eventually willing to place myself out there again.  To again feel the cool breeze on my face, the rush of the warm Spring air, to again smile.

I’ve always been guided by strong principles, often falling towards being dead-set in my ways.  My beliefs about many things in life are strong and nearly impermeable.  How to treat a woman. How I associate with other men.  I admit that sometimes it makes me hard to get along with once the façade has been stripped away.  My ostensible and obvious disdain for people who should know better than to act like little boys and girls.

In a way, I’m an arrogant man.  Yet it’s partly this arrogance that’s made me who I am, for better or for worse.  I remember a girl I dated once who described me as one of the most arrogant men she’s dated, and how disturbed I was by her statement.  I struggled for a long time after that, trying to weigh the pros and cons of both sides.  I realized afterward that though I may seem arrogant, I am always carefully weighing the sides of the story and situation.  What’s best for me?  What’s best for her?

Perhaps because of this I tend to weed out the bad people fairly quickly.  I’m impressed by self-made women.  Women who are searching for something better — for themselves, and are willing to grab for it with utmost jealousy.  But I also realize that no one is perfect.  I’ll readily admit that I’m one of the most imperfect and flawed people out there.  The difference is that I want to see that they are trying to improve on their current state.  Give me a piece of coal and I see a diamond in the making.  And I’ll continue to see it that way until I know the cause is lost.

As I get older, I feel myself slipping further into cynicism.  Ah… my youth was filled with bright optimism.  I was like Superman who could save the day and create rain from the most wistful of clouds.  But now, it’s not so.  We are all just human, and have to work with what we have got.

I used to think I knew what my perfect woman would be.  Beautiful, smart, bright, engaging, understanding, full of promise and a will to work for it.  Sometimes we all need that little push in our lives, and I’m willing to give in a little, but now I feel myself only willing to give as much as I receive in return.  I know this sounds kind of asshole-ish, but it’s the truth.  Sometimes people just end up being black pits where we might try to fill, but it just eats up whatever we put in.

So I still don’t know what I want.  But I know what I don’t want. I don’t want selfishness, or to have to babysit someone.  I don’t want to be limited because I’ve yet to feel totally accomplished.  There is a certain height in my career that I haven’t fulfilled yet, a certain feeling in life and adventure I’ve yet to find.

It’s odd yet mildly amusing at the same time.  I often describe my dates as “adventures,” because that’s what they should be.  Partly it’s my abhorrence to the traditional date, but furthermore a date should be something new each time.  Each meeting should be an opportunity to expand horizons, even if it’s something simple as a home cooked meal and the slow drawl of chatter by the fireplace afterward.  Expectations of the unexpected. It’s not enough to me to dine at a fancy restaurant in the hills that requires reservations.  Can she deal with a picnic at the beach, where we’re surely going to get dirty and sand in our flip-flops?  I guess in a way my “unwants” thin out into what I do “want.”  I don’t know.

If in the case that she ends up being more successful in her career than I (which would be quite hard, I assure you), would she look down on me?  Would she pour indignities and spite down on me like a friend of mine dealt with through his ex-wife?  No matter what, a couple is built up by two — will either side remember the contributions of the other?  How can you weigh such things?

Me.  I’m an emotional hodge-podge, molded together with the scraps of my own experiences and seeing through the eyes of my friends.  I’m dark, brooding, cynical, yet I see something left here for me.  There is always some light left at the end of the tunnel.  I might die trying to reach it, but one can’t really know the truth unless one tries.

I’m not Superman. But I do hope that whoever she is, she understands that deep down in my flawed self, I am trying my best.

Open Eyes, Open Mind

One of my biggest strengths, yet also one of the biggest downfalls, is my penchant for to observe and soak in information.  Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed as my senses soak in things that are either critical, or useless.  And even more so when I break it down and analyze it.

Social interactions.  There are so many lonely hearts in this world, and others that are oblivious to everything.  I see the guy that’s trying too hard, insisting on buying the girl drinks when she’s trying to tell him very nicely by looking away that she’s not interested.  The group of women on the prowl, but trying to come off choosy and increasing their value.  The odd couple arguing outside of the venue, their underlying problems exploding after trying to hold it in for too long.  The guy taking a date out and trying to imply that he has more success than he really has.  The youngsters tagging along to the VIP without appreciation or understanding of how much a bottle really costs.

These are all real-world things that I see everyday.  How we as people are trying to fill a mold, sometimes without realizing that it may be cracked.  My eyes are open, my mind understanding.  Being able to understand someone’s basic qualities and tendencies after seeing them in action for a few moments.  We as people, combined all together, form the human identity.  It’s not what we say that amount to anything, it’s what we do, how we react to situations, that show our true nature.  Our insight and how we can improve situations for ourselves and others.

I’m quiet.  I’m content.