today is my new year's eve.

2008.

thank you.

tomorrow...it's all dependent on free will and the choices people make in themselves, for themselves, of themselves.

i hope for the best but i will accept whatever is truth.

i've never been happier.

sometimes it's about having the focus to reach your goals.

sometimes it's about more than you could have ever imagined and you find it slipping through your hands.

sometimes in the middle of the night, you can feel your hands letting go.

sometimes you find them there again in the morning and you don't remember how.

sometimes it's just quiet.

you feel that generator inside you.

that simultaneous pull to hold on or let go

to be a part of something or remain yourself

sometimes you dream about cars and lakes like gaping mouths and guns.

sometimes that's when you admit you are lost.

it begins with an ache.
definitely an ache.
somewhere inside you
you don't know where
the back of your teeth
your feet
your eyes
an ache.

you can be happy. you can feel all the pulses of
life within you, matching rhythm with the world.
you can feel everything continue forever
like the ocean
the mountains
the blanket of night
while inside you, remains an ache.

you can feel bigger than everything
bigger than everyone
see their hopes and dreams
their fears and failures
their shame.

and you hold their beating hearts in between the edges of your teeth
so alive and delicate and vital
demanding of it
the urge to bite down primal but irrelevant

and they'll show you everything
show you the blood and sores and abandoned rooms
the sweat
the terror
the everything and anything so much bigger and blacker
with their hands inside of them
even in the calm of their voice you can hear
the nighttime anxieties like stones rattling inside glass bottles
they'll show you everything and still swear they don't believe in it.

they'll see the blood on your hands and they won't believe you did it.
you'll tell them that you've torn it out, you've torn it all out
every last bit that seethed inside them
spreading infinite emptiness
you tell them it's magic. real magic. not the stuff of unicorns and rainbows.
but the things that men go to war over when
the women stoically hold it between cool fingertips
just waiting for someone to ask the right question.
and they won't believe you
because they're so terrified of the blood they may find on their hands.
and that makes you ashamed of their blood on yours.

and throughout all this
it's the ache. the ache that accompanies you
the ache that has always been there for you
the ache who has never failed you.
it is the ache that cries out into the night
using darkness to reach out for familiar hands
the ache searches for its own.
the ache uses you.
the ache renews you.
the ache can only find an equal.

but the ache is never more vindictive
than when it fears seeing behind a person's mask
and finding emptiness
a lack
a void
an impenetrable stranger

the ache fears death.
the ache fears that it has pulsed and beat and
longed for its own echo
where never an echo has existed.

2008. A Retrospective

Fuck became my favorite seasoning.

The seasons changed colors and moods.

I fell in love with a ghost.

It came with strings of such resentment.

In the space between I want to believe it validates life.

I left my boss.

Like a fake-smile relationship with the rich, idiot kid of the guy your mom works for, but who you have to be nice to so she can always have a job. I started to throw around the word retarded because if that label can be used on my brother when he's so much smarter than them, then they're for sure retarded.

I found that I enjoy disappearing. That I love giving out hugs, but I don't like people to know how to find me.

I found that if you put too much pressure on me, I just spin spin spin

I found how deeply I can ache within my happiness.

The world is really not so big when you look at it as a tiny place inside you

The world is really only as big as you can imagine yourself.

2008 was heaven and hell

and somewhere in it all

i didn't lose my mind.

after months of hard work, we just won best new product at cannabis cup with the bc chillum. it was an incredible high, working with david to make something out of nothing and have it be successful. we're both winners when we want to be, when we put our drive and energy into something. there's just no question how strongly we can project ourselves onto reality when we want it. the highlight for me was the owner of the coffeehouse we were sponsered by, a shrewd and incisive no-nonsense businessman, saying i was brilliant and that he'd never seen someone put so much energy into a project. and that i'd impressed him which was saying a lot because he's not easily impressed. it meant a lot to me because the guy says what he means and doesn't bullshit. He really meant it and it came out of respect--i'm on his level. i think i knew that this was one of the things i wanted going in. it was one of my goals--to have a great time, to give others a great time, to win, and to let an opportunity that this guy gave us turn into something bigger and stronger than he could have ever expected, demanding his respect as an equal. i'm really happy because we succeeded in all of those objectives.

his girlfriend, the owner of a seed company that also won a few awards, gave a speech the second time saying this was for all the women out there who dare to dream. that when she first started, this guy had said she was a goldfish who needed to learn how to swim with sharks and now she was swimming with sharks. afterwards, she came up to me and gave me a big hug and said that us women just have to do it. it doesn't matter if it's a man's world, but if we have the talent and the ability and the burning in our hearts, we have to do it. in a way, that second speech came after we won, and i think it had to do with both of our wins...we were the only two women in the winners. that meant a lot to me.

i'm still recovering from the cup. i really did put everything into it, but it was great, it was so focused, i never lost track of my goals. it was 22 energy. the craziest thing is that at the beginning of the year, i would have never expected that 2008 would involve me quitting my job of 4 years, meeting a soulmate, moving to amsterdam and winning a cannabis cup.

this year has been the most incredible, free, adventurous of my life and i'm so thankful for it.

berlin

is this borrowed time?
was something valuable broken that night?
are we just episodically reliving the echoes of that night?
or is it me, the constant storm brewing inside me
a tormented ghost
a blackwashed memory
trapped within, shaking its cage at night
demanding to be acknowledged as a real and living breathing thing that
happened

so it can free itself
find a wide open space
flail its fists at invisible people who were
there but not there when she really needed them
cut herself open
and scream.

without endings there are no beginnings.
that was how this journey began.
without breaking the old, you can't make way for the new.
even if the new has the same face as the old.

i went to a new chiropractor today. he broke up scar tissue in my body. he was surprised how i worked through it and didn't cry or complain. he said i was really tough. he said it's the men who usually holler and cry...women are just tougher. i told him when it comes to things that need to be done, facing pain, the worst i might do is cuss, but usually i giggle.

i told him that the person i'm dating picks up my pain psychically. i told him how the night i left, i'd tried to help him work out pain in his left shoulder. the next day, i had pain in my right shoulder in the same place under the shoulder blade. a few days later, he had a headache and as soon as i got off the phone, i had a blinding headache. the doctor said he hoped that by healing me, it would heal him.

also, when i told him about how he psychically picks up my pain, the doctor said, yeah, he's the one. he's your soulmate.

i thought about it. it felt like so long ago that i still believed in soulmates, like an echo when i never realized the original sound was gone.

i told him yes, he and i both recognized each other when we first met. in fact, i'd been having dreams about him months before, even knew his name.

wow, the doctor said. you have a really good life.

i thought about it. i said:

sometimes you have to be careful though. sometimes soulmates come into your life strong, but it turns out they weren't meant to stay but they're just meant to help move you towards where you're supposed to be.

he was quiet for a bit, his hands dropping to his lap as he contemplated.

that's true, too, he finally said, quietly.

inside, something in me cringed. truth is truth but it still hurts to hear it sometimes.

when the session was over, he told me i struck him as someone who really saw things, and told me again that i have a really good life.

i thanked him and meant it.

the sadness never hit me, at least not all at once.

it started as a trickle, and no matter who reached out with kindness or what strangers tried to give me warmth, it felt like drops of heat that filled me, tumbling me down down down inside myself until i was laying in it.

what you exchange for being able to see and feel more consciously, is a painfully conscious awareness that whatever the truth may be, whether you want it or not, you will always have to accept it.

it's what i always wanted. but is this a good life? can truth intersect what i want?

highlight of my night has got to be shaq pushing everyone in a red uniform tonight. espn's probably gonna go hogwild over it all night.

i'm strong
i'm happy
i'm free
whatever will be will be.

the love that i give the world
is a reflection of everything i see
and those who want to will understand
that the world is a beautiful place through my eyes...
one they can only see if they believe
one that takes faith to realize

to come from a place where humans have been so angry
and to stand proudly and nakedly with light
people who truly see me believe in magic
those who can't or won't...i tried
no matter what i can't change.
i won't get discouraged or fight
life is a river so much more powerful than me
and i'll find what i need when it's right.

last night i had a dream where i was in a very sunny place. new town, new home, nothing was familiar because i'd left my old life to begin anew, and i took solace that it was new. a new start. i could feel that i was trying to get away, get away from the old and familiar that had become too painful and draining for me to feel like myself anymore, so i hoped to find myself in the new, that by being surrounded by all that was unfamiliar, i would come face to face with all that was truly me within me. i needed to be myself again, be with myself again, not fight with people who did not accept what i tried to give, who didn't trust what i was trying to give, who tore me down so some days were filled with a feeling of isolation, of loneliness. not everyone has to accept me, but i want to find the people who do, and want who and what i am without rejecting me if i come too close to them or their pain. i wanted to find nice people willing to accept what i want to give, because the truth in this kind of connection will be easy and obvious.

it felt like the farther away i went though, the farther i went to the edges of town, i would end up back in the same place, in the living room of my new townhome in a strange little sunny town. one day, i got in my car and drove out of town, out through the desert, out through mountains to find another town, but when i opened the door to my new house, he was sitting on the couch waiting for me.

hello, i said.

hello, he said.

i had questions, like what he was doing there, how he had known, but a part of me knew that this was his place as much as it was mine, that no matter how far i went, the end of the line in the distance always returned to the same point here.

so i gave in to it. it was good for a little while. we stayed on the surface politely. i almost forgot about the loneliness. one night, the town was protesting because something had happened that was unfair, some rule that was an injustice, a discrimination. the young people in town were up in arms, marching through the streets towards city hall, yelling in windows for people who were passive and afraid to get involved to stand up and fight for what's right. another couple, the girl being a friend of mine, sarah i think, were with us in our living room. they had come over and the four of us had planned to join the march that night and had put on our coats getting ready to leave, but as soon as the protestors arrived, as soon as they were yelling into our window, he sat back down.

let's go, i said, considering we were planning to join them anyway. hell, we all already had our coats on. no, he said. he looked stricken, terrified, likely to bite me defensively if i made a sudden move towards him. he looked at the mob in our window, carrying signs, angry, yelling at us for being passive while people outside suffered. i felt like they were angry at us, but if they saw us leave and join them, they would cheer, because they could see we were on the same side.

but he wouldn't get up, scared of the angry crowd. we're with them, i said. we're on their side. if we don't go out there, they're going to think we're against them but if we go out there and face them, they'll be happy. but he wouldn't go because he was afraid of them, afraid of their collective anger, afraid of their collective chaos, afraid of their collective energy, just inexplicably, afraid.

he left the room and i looked from my friend to the crowd at the window. it almost looked like the window was caving in, was going to burst in a shatter of glass at their sheer intensity, their fervor that we were being passive and allowing bad things to happen outside us as though these things weren't completely in our hands. they wanted us to stand up and get out of the house because it's always in our hands if we stand up to things, if we stand up for things, if we unite.

but the three of us were alone in the room, he was gone, and i didn't know what to do.

it felt like the room was leaking water, and then i realized it was coming from inside me, like the pressure inside my chest was so great, it had sprung a leak that burned me with each drop that fell in a pool in my stomach.

my friend looked at me with such love and compassion i couldn't stand it because she's wasn't the one i needed it from. i shook my head and looked far away, knowing she knew the truth as well as i did but i was afraid to hear it.

is he always going to run away from his emotions like this, she asked me, quietly.

suddenly, it became overwhelming, the truth so obvious and thick in the room. inside me, i felt the coming of the flood, the flood that would burst my insides and suddenly, i would become nothing.

i slipped to the floor and cried, releasing all the pain and sadness i've been holding in for so long, her concerned voice, the voice of someone who loves me, yelling my name while he was nowhere to be found, melting into darkness until the world and my body no longer existed and i was just a pool of echoes.

i put my trust in you
pushed as far as i could go
in the end it doesn't really matter

because no matter how much you love someone
no matter how much you give and how much you
want to support
their wounds are theirs to keep.
their wounds are theirs to heal.
and if they can't trust you in those painful places
if they can't trust you enough to let go of their pain
if they can't trust you to lead them out of the darkness
even though you know your love
is the brightest, most healing light
this is their choice
you have to respect that no matter
how much it hurts you.
the only thing you can decide
is how will you lead your life
how will you define your own happiness
how will you honor yourself and your
short time as this embodiment on this earth
even if it means letting go of something you
love so deeply
even if it means cutting out a piece of yourself
to set the rest of you free.

we've all been wounded in some way
life and humans have sharper edges than
they mean to have
it's those of us who have been brave enough to trust
and have faith in light
who have found a way to heal.
but not everyone wants to heal.
sometimes scars and pain are the only friends
a person could count on to always be consistent
and that may be the saddest story of all.
i am not one of these people anymore.
i am not walking wounded.
i have been free for a long time
and with the right kind of love, i will
give everything without concern to my scars.

they will either come to you bravely
and accept you and the warmth of your
hands completely
their hands helping yours do the same
or clutching their wounds, they will
disappear into the night.

life is not in any one person's hands.

the best you can do is be true to your highest self and try.

my time in la has been really good but not enough. i was supposed to have been able to spend more time at home to reflect, but after only one night with friends and one night with brian, i've gotta go to the bay area and intersect the realities of my family who have been a bit neglected. still, this is not enough time alone to reflect on my own path. i was due to disappear into meditation two days ago. i need to commit to it and do it. tomorrow, i go off the grid. wednesday, i go into the woods. after that...will be whatever happens, whatever's supposed to happen. i will be brave and accept my reality whatever it is.

the aftertaste of today:

something today did not add up.

man up
stand up

admit.

heart of velvet
brutal hands
infallible code of honor
equal to only his other
truth lays within both man and beast
grace lives in one or the other.

i have to be myself. that's just what it comes down to.

aspiration


what?

nothing.

no really, what'd you say?

nothing.

sorry.

i experience the range of human emotions through faces
i enter your life through your eyes and your words.

it depends on how you feel having a stranger crawl through your house. most people don't.

i am careful not to be followed home.

most people aren't.

how do we count our memories? in their value remembered? or their value forgotten?

it's the idea of solitude that always got me

but i was always waiting for someone.

amsterdam

city of light
city of darkness
flimsy to the seasons
whimsical to murk

these days, i only tell the people closest to me that i'm happy.

every piece of his past i learn is like ripping open a scar, reopening old wounds, and leaving them open to heal or consume me. they are his past yet i feel them as old injuries, as though my heart was always aware of everything throughout time, but i need to hear him tell me himself so i can convince the part of me that doesn't want to believe it's true. you see it all as a betrayal, no matter how unfair it is, and at the end of the day it's whether you can be with someone who lives up to any of your ideals.

i suspect that when the questions end, we'll finally begin.

musical identity. highs and lows the sum of individual notes. i like to trick you, where the bigger picture doesn't seem to be made up of the notes. and you have to decide, which do you believe.

it's easy. i can be anything you want me to be. if i let you. and secretly, i usually do.

the biggest risk is that i disappear.

there's a secret to that as well. the secret balance where i forget i can.

disappear. i was going to disappear today. but i didn't. i like to talk while i drive. you'd be surprised by how many things i can do without really paying attention. or maybe you wouldn't be. but if i'm asked for it with absolute honesty, there are things i give absolute attention.

call people up, grab them by the heart through the phone. words energies spaceless bodiless you bring their worlds inside you and you have the chance to understand. give them something, some light. accept when they give you light.

little boys who brood in the dark.

you all know who you are.

you're like eyes of wolves pearing out from the edge of the woods. i see you.

i could be the best friend you ever had if you stand up and realize how to hug me. sometimes it's the right things touching at the right moments. learn how to let go. make a decision to grow up.

then you can find out if what you saw was illusion or real.

everyone. within a moment. will think the same thought.

everyone, within a moment, will have their hearts seize up and feel the same emotion.

everyone, within a moment, will open their eyes and in an instant realize the truth of it.

it's the ones who stay awake long enough to remember that moment who bear the secrets of the world.

my world is my primal companion. a kinship between a predator and a child left in the woods. i know it will never bite me as long as i believe it will never bite me. i've accepted it by giving in to it so in essence, i've crossed a barrier into the eyes of something completely primal.

a man and his meat. you don't get between a man and his meat.

men don't understand the meaning of everything. i think they do, but they're afraid to.

i can go wherever i want.

don't come at me the right way, i'll bite you.

but outside of that, i'm highly trained.

i am 2 side today. 8 was a strong number. at times i had both side 1 and 2 using the same voice. today i was not paying full attention. today was a day where i was floating.

36 is my favorite here. 29 is my favorite there even though i always felt warmly towards 36 when i caught it. 63 is not the same thing as 36. it's gotta be 36.

08-...-2008 22:02:28

it was important.

today i used a power saw. without safety goggles. cutting glass.

tomorrow i will be social and try not to be too weird. keep my honesty at bay. tell enough jokes so that people don't notice. make food.

i'm relieved my little mormon is still here. i wish his people were kinder to everyone.

sleep. i should sleep right now. but i don't want to miss out on the good stuff.

two worlds rotating in opposite directions

he would be better at it than me.

trust. i really don't trust you until you answer all my questions.

there are always things in there that you don't want to find. i don't really want to find them either. but the problem is, these questions. they show up like packages on my doorstep that can't be ignored.

darkness or light. darkness or light.

you can have either. but keep toying with me and you're just going to get more than you can handle.

need someone higher than me to help me get perspective. that's the real way to support me. not by bullying me when i'm trying to boost you up.

life could go either way.

i'm let down by the way people always make promises like dangling carrots. i'm a horse. i'll always be seduced by carrots. sometimes it's not fair that they keep me running this way. one day i'm just going to sit down and say fuck it. and when they ask me what's wrong, i'm gonna say, i'm a fucking horse. i don't need your fucking carrot. i can eat some damn grass if i want to. and i won't even bother to watch them walk away.

david
my sole masterpiece
carving into stone to set the angel free
chips cutting into steady hands and making them bleed
but no other choice but to live
frenzy and need
to rescue the buried
and a shattering silent cry for a heart that arrived before its time
finally found
clinging to its other within rock
above me, the goddess laughs
a single light burning through black
while stones and hands and hammers below
dream of angels.

pick and choose your battles. pick and choose your battles.

if you really wanted me to be really honest, i'll tell you everything but you have to be willing to hear me first, not attack everything that comes out of my mouth at first sign of skin.

maybe i say too much when i'm honest. i'm known for my honesty sometimes for my brutality with it.

i wish i could have been there for him with my arms.

fear is such a disease. you can conquer it to the edges of you, just feeling it as a pressure on your heart, but you have to always focus on remaining relaxed and clear and stronger than fear so it doesn't pull you into it's circle of rage, passing back and forth between people.

3 night...7 hours of sleep. can't eat. head clear. constantly touched by people. heart full.

you wouldn't believe how much i love him. it's like my dedication to him forces me to travel deep inside myself and accept the parts of myself that are so difficult for me to love, just so i can give him as much of everything as i can rip from walls with bare hands. if i were honest and not so tired from awareness, tired from wrestling with him, i would tell him...stop worrying. i would want him to believe in himself. i would want him to stop being afraid of me. i would want him to take care of me. i would want him to feel confident that he could take care of me. i would want him to know that with someone who is really willing to come with me, i will light the way. as long as he can protect my body from darkness.

sometimes it's like the sheer power to believe isn't enough to make people trust. why do we walk wounded. some of us aren't even wounded. sometimes i feel like life tried to blind me, and all of a sudden, i found i could see a side of things not everyone can see. no sleep no food no mind. just present perceiving and a feeling of being in the world and being without. i haven't even looked at my cards yet. i wonder if the will speak to me.

i always slap people. energetically. not enough to really hurt anyone but just a warning that i'm joking but i'm serious. sometimes i'm really angry, and whenever i'm angry, i want people to stand up. i want them to be bigger than this. which loved one hasn't been cussed at by me? i laugh when you call me abusive. if you only knew how wide my heart was for your happiness.

we fight. it directly correlates to fucking. one energizes the other. one can't live without the other. every day you need one or the other. we make positive choices. some days it feels we will spontaneously combust. if it could happen we would probably look forward to it because it would bring us closer together.

i talk to him the way i talk to myself. for better or for worse. sometimes i just want to unleash my straightforwardness on him. my honesty. show him everything. but i'm pretty sure he doesn't really want to see yet, hence the resistance, so i am patient. i don't think it will happen until he can actually hear me. one day, he'll just get it, who the hell i am. then i'll start using less words and more meaning. try not to run straight at crabs. it kind of tweaks them. can't really hug them either, until you transform the crab into a man.

learn what truth is for me. you really want to know, you peel off every layer of something (with every layer having its own truth) until you finally get its core truth, its being. you have to be persistent, because if you don't ask for it, you won't get through the layers. people hate answering the same question over and over. they don't understand that if they actually heard the question and considered the answer honestly, they would be able to give an answer that would satisfy the question.

today was a good day. yesterday was a good day. everyone is happy around me. i'm so confused by the weather and the way the air feels. i'm actually motivated to go to the beach.

ah, beach. venice. social experiments. truth.

yes. tomorrow i'm going to disappear.

once you find another person who can really hear you, who can really understand you and believe in you, who can really be inside you, then within those airwaves, you've found your personal jesus.

no i'm not going to switch my mind to your time zone. you're fucked la. this time i can really see you guys and i'm going to tell it like it is.

speaking of.

cosmic stalkers. took him 10 years.

email to friend i haven't spoke to in a long time:

So I've been living in Europe the last 3 months. Today was my first day back in LA, landed this morning, my head a continent away. In between the Prop8 protest and SWAT response happening at the end of my street and a wild Madonna concert which was the happiest (gayest) mass event in recent memory, I walk into my favorite writing spot, my home away from home, my haven, the place where the different storylines of my life collide, and there sits ... .......

what?

tonight i am free. home. can feel my feet again for the first time in 3 months.

me. completely. me in secrecy. the truth of me.

finally. to wear my own skin again.

find things i've lost in the ocean. proof of god. proof there is someone out there who listens, who sees. this is important to me.

honesty. only when i believe in something will i make the effort to show myself.

yes, i am stronger than i'm willing to lead people to believe. it's just none of most people's business what i can do.

secretly, i'm still on amsterdam time. it's how i'm able to see you people so clearly today.

now you know it in reverse:

to get more space, add time.

i am 64% shadow. i am 36% light.

light is more powerful but harder to maintain.

when i choke the shadow and it bleeds, i get music.

within the whirlwind, remember me. if you forget, i forget.

i only look in eyes.

relationships aren't about validation.

it's about the raw, vulnerable, human need to really know someone and be known.

ghosts haunt huts where the dirt floor soaks up spilt blood hungrily, never leaving a trace other than a damp stain that could mean anything.

sometimes people are born in homes turned inside out, where the cold resides within still chambers where the heater roars on.

i knew a woman once who killed herself because she couldn't find her keys one morning and that had been the breaking point. it was on a dark corner where the alleyway met the streetlight, air so cold your breath materializes before it realizes its no longer connected to your body, dead before it hits the ground. she was going in the direction i came, i was going forward, searching for the name of something i'd already found. i saw her sad, inward eyes and recognized her because i'd met her once before, before she ever tried to unlock that secret room, before she knew there was nothing in it. ignorance is always the universe's gift to the innocent. are you alive, i asked her, because something about the moment wasn't right. are you alive, she asked, and dismissed me, walking into the shadows behind me, her black coat flapping unbuttoned despite the cold. i felt snubbed.

it made me more rawly aware of how utterly alone i was on a strange sidewalk in a strange, lost city.

i dreamed of her once. in the dream, she seemed as real as she did to me that night, as real as she had been in the daylight as a flesh and blood person. she found me at the edge of a canal, watching the ducks swim jagged paths in the murky water, almost restless with their need to escape the very being of who they were. she sat next to me and for a second, i thought she was my best friend, though once i realized my mistake, the feeling of familiarity did not dissipate. she was wearing a red sweater with a single, round felt covered button at the neck. it seemed to diminish her so she seemed so much smaller, so much farther way than she actually was.

you should know you're being followed, she said. i'm sorry no one has ever told you that.

she stood up and left. i noticed her feet looked too small for her body. i may or may not have said goodbye, but i watched the ducks for a while, until one of them plunged under water and despite my anxious attention, never resurfaced.