"It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black."
-This is Spinal Tap
2009 was the year I went rogue.
2010 is the year I went black.
Blog is moved to:
www.juliashih.com/echo
Friday, March 12, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
went to berkeley tonight to meet up with rie and head over to aubrey and candice's to visit their baby. we went to pick up some food at the berkeley bowl, this whole-foods like market where the produce is supposed to be all local. i was driving the shopping cart with seigo in it, and we were talking about where i should move as she picked out some organic mango slices from a plastic bin. i said, "i just feel like san jose will be really boring."
a big, black brutha who looked like a rich man's common, overheard and walked by saying, "yeah it'll be." i laughed and rie stared. "you don't want to live in san jose," he said, smiled and walked away.
i went on saying that fremont would be worse when rie turned around almost in a panic and said, "that guy was really hot! why didn't you do anything?"
"what was to be done?" i asked. it's not like he stopped and asked me for my number and i said no. "besides," i said, nodding towards seigo, "he probably talked to me cuz he thought seigo's my kid, so i'm safe." we kept bumping into him in the aisles and almost because rie had made a big deal of it, i was embarrassed every time.
we headed over to aubrey and candice's with takeout and spent the night chatting with them. rie and eric only live about 10 minutes away from them, so i hope they can hang out, even if i'm not there. rie's my best friend from college and aubrey's my best friend from high school. they both recently had kids. they should hang.
ethan fell asleep in my arms and i didn't want to move and wake him, so i told aubrey to go take a nap while his son was down. i can't imagine it, how new parents can function on so little sleep.
we drank wine with candice. girl talk. men, life, etc. biggest disappointment? a bad kisser.
"can a guy be a bad kisser but good in bed?"
"NO!" we said. if a guy's a bad kisser, who sticks around long enough to find out if he's good in bed?
candice can not believe my celibacy thing. why do you think i went so nuts with basketball last year?
"it's not from lack of trying," i said.
"it IS from lack of trying," rie said.
i've always been very good about not rebounding between relationships. if i meet a guy and really like him, i want to know that i'm being fair to him and the relationship, to feel confident that i know to the best of my understanding up to this point in life what i want, what i need. to like a guy for who he is rather than projections and mitigating circumstances driven by the past. i won't use you. please don't use me. that's what i try to bring to relationships. that, and absolute awesomeness.
but this requires long stretches of self-discipline, soul-searching, and lots and lots and lots of exercise. i'm just looking for someone i can really feel connected with.
got a message from michael. my mom has a free southwest ticket which she said i could use to fly back to seattle. these tickets can be booked anytime so i've been procrastinating with it, but michael's our family travel agent so he offered to book it for me. he booked it, but he didn't change the name so apparently, my mom was booked for a flight to seattle. had to head home to fix it.
it amazes me to think that the next time i come back to the bay area, probably in 6-8 weeks, ethan will be so much bigger. he's 6 weeks now, but infants grow so fast. the development is exponential.
before leaving, i took this picture of seigo:
precious little munchkin.
weird. got a friend request from that rapper/lyrical poet from the theor******, this funk/hip hop group i really like in seattle. i'd recently been hyping them on facebook. i had tried to fly back in time for their show last month (and had invited some of my basketball teammates), but i had to go to la for my shoulder check-up instead. but i'd pulled a couple of clips off youtube and put them on my facebook. he sent a message, "you came to my performance at the triple door, correct?"
i was surprised because i remember he had noticed me and we had smiled at each other, but i didn't go up and talk to him even though it was a small club because i'm not like that. call it shy, call it believing that conversation should happen naturally, call it not wanting to be another groupie, i don't know. but i did buy his group's cd, which i'd been enjoying in my cd player in seattle, and signed up for the mailing list.
i thought about it, and figured he probably sent a mass friend request to everyone who had signed up for the mailing list who had been at the show, or somehow tracked back the youtube clips and saw what i wrote about them on facebook. it was just another random add. but i sent him a message saying that their show at the triple door was the best show i'd seen in seattle and i was looking forward to the march show.
he wrote back asking how long i would be in seattle, and what i was doing in ca.
??
does he actually remember me? so random.
wants: lots of love
needs: lots of space
to give: lots of love and lots of space
will compromise: lone operator-ism for an equal partner in crime
deal breaker: having to guess where i stand
lone wolf is young alpha male broken from the pack to start new pack with female lone. two alphas willing to dominate world rather than each other are yin and yang, new world order.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
i'm going back to seattle on thursday. terri is driving through on her way to vancouver and she also wants me to meet her new boyfriend. sensing this is the one.
incidentally, there's been a book that i've been saving to read in march. no specific reason, just felt like that was the right time to encounter it. looks like it's time.
it's true. i hold myself to a higher standard. it's because there are so many things in which i know better than to do. it's about responsibility, or accountability. i still have flaws, and failings, and i have to be as compassionate about them as i am when it comes to other people. we're all still human. but i can't let myself get away with things if i know that i know better.
when i went over to aubrey and candice's, aubrey noticed that ethan was fixated on the spot above my head.
"he's fascinated by your aura," he said.
"he's looking at my halo," i said. "it's finally intact."
aubrey gave me a quizzical look.
"i've been good for a very long time, aubrey."
he smiled. he's never known me to be not good. "what defines good?" he asked.
"restraint," i said.
maybe in fremont, i'm just bored out of my mind.
as soon as my arm gets strong enough so that i can handle things living alone, i'm heading back to seattle. plan my next move. i can either come back in june, or finish my lease in september. if i only have 1 completed short story to show for this one year sabbatical, i'm going to be pissed. i have to stop quitting on myself and throwing out the work as soon as it gets challenging. will probably live in palo alto or san jose so i can be close to both office and culinary school. start work first, get acclimated for a year, then start culinary program. want to be able to do what i have to do here and be out in 2-3 years. back in la. or at least, have one foot firmly planted in la.
can't go back to la for at least 2 years anyway since i've signed out my place. and of course, all i wanna do is go back, own a place off the beach where i can watch the sun set into the ocean every day. want to be able to financially do that in 2 years. i'm going to always need 2 homes in 2 separate cities. that's just the way i am.
gemini. needs two of everything. but wants only one person. go figure.
sidekicks need to be intelligent, capable and brave, but content with being the sidekick. i've advertised for a sidekick when i was younger. i'm pretty sure most of the guys who applied really just wanted to sleep with me.
men who don't understand me but just want to sleep with me are starfuckers.
you know what it's called when random strangers think they know you but they don't? celebrity.
you know why celebrities are crazy? because they no longer have full rights to their own lives.
you know what it means when people keep coming up to you in public places thinking you look familiar even though they don't know you? it means you better start busting your ass giving them a reason to know you, because someone out there who looks just like you already has.
whenever i tell rie that some guy has sparked my interest, her first question is usually, "is he actually datable or are you just horny?"
ideally i want to find the person who's mine. the one who gets me, and i get him, and we make each other and the world around us a better place. we'll each be entire intriguing universes to each other that are endless to explore, and together, we'll grow. but that happens when it's meant to happen, and there's been a lot of life lived without him where i've been on my own.
a part of me would love to mess around while i'm biding my time, waiting for that person i'm going to intertwine lives with. i get bored, i get lonely. it's not easy. this wait has been long. especially because i know everyone else lives life so much less seriously (or consciously), and especially because sex is a good thing. but i feel like it's not an avenue that i'm allowed. even if i just wanted something casual for the sake of something casual, i need to have rapport and chemistry with someone, otherwise it won't be good. but if we have rapport and chemistry, usually the guy wants a relationship, or feels i used him. it never works out. i fall into relationships i knew could never work even before it started. then i feel like i should have known better. i should never pursue for the sake of pursuing. i have to be willing to keep what i catch, and understanding that now, i've learned restraint. there are times when someone piques my interest and i want to chase, but i have to ask myself what is my end goal, and if i can't see myself wanting to keep him, have him in my life, take a relationship seriously, then i have to let him go. i can't hunt for the sake of hunting anymore. maybe i tried when i was younger and didn't know better, but now that i know people can get hurt, it's on me to make better judgment. and i have. this is what i mean when i tell people i've been good for a long time. it's restraint. i don't pursue for thrill. i restrain myself to wait for something that's real.
incidentally, when i tried to move my blog yesterday, it suddenly published posts that were saved as drafts. i found this post, from 12/25/09 (2:52 am). here's an example. i knew i was pursuing this guy because he was fascinating to me but there was no way anything real could come about it. so i forced myself to let go. and when it's something that wasn't meant to be yours in the first place, it breaks like a fever. then you know.
we guarded each other today, played each other hard. he blocked about 6 of my shots, but i had some moves today that outdid myself. last games were 2 on 2 and we guarded each other while josh played with me. josh and i work really well together. 2nd person asked if josh is my type today, and i answer that we're friends that go way back. that's valuable.
i asked the guy if he has kids and he said he didn't. i figured he either has young sons, or he has an older sister who has boys. he feels like someone who's been divorced if he is indeed single.
this fixation is no good. when i told my mom about him, she said i'm just hunting again. i feel it, too. i have such a need to be immersed inside people and taste their world as though it were my own. but i never own it. i just want to see it. and even though i try to leave people in better places, sometimes it gets messy. i think this is one of those situations where i just have to have the willpower to forget about it and not mess around with it.
Monday, March 8, 2010
My mom and her friend are trying really hard to set me up with her friend's son. Except he already has a girlfriend. We met up because he works in Fremont and finished his culinary degree part-time at PCI in San Jose, and so they invited me to an open house so I could check out the school. That was fine. But then they keep finding excuses for me to need to contact him. I finally told my mom that I'm sure we each think the other person is cool, but I don't want him to think I'm trying to get with him when he's already got a girlfriend. This is completely against my code of ethics, and she knows that. He's a nice guy, but this situation is daunting and wrong. But I'm glad for the intro to the school. I'm very excited about being able to do that program part-time.
surprising.
drove around today trying to find a place to sit and write and couldn't. finally decided to go to the cafe in the gym to work since they have free wifi and then i could just work out. as i was writing, i looked up to see curtis working. i've never seen him here on a sunday. so he saw me looking and smiling and came over. we ended up talking for about 5 hours, with him staying past his shift to the gym closing. he told me that he has the keys to the place, so i asked him if i wanted to come play basketball at 3am, if he could let me in, and he said he could. i asked if we could play now, and he said yes, so we stayed at the gym well past midnight, with him helping me shoot left-handed.
he was riding me about writing, and my whole not knowing how to tell this story, and thus, my delaying in writing the story. about how i have to be willing to write crap and get it all out, rather than this idea that i have to write the big story and nothing else. he wants to help me rework my website so i can keep my blog on it rather than having my site and my blog hidden on blogger. i told him i don't want my blog out there, but i need to combine all the stuff in my notebooks and all my digital files into one large searchable database. he said i can just sit a homepage, but password protect the things i don't want the public to see. but he will need access to my blog. i've been unwilling to tell him the address, mostly because i've written about him and will have to hide anything related to him if i hand it over. and also not being sure i want him to see this much of my past and my insides.
but then i think, it shouldn't matter.
he asked me if i thought he was dangerous to me. i didn't really answer the question, said it was inconclusive. you can be dangerous to someone without being a dangerous person. but maybe, what's dangerous to me is what hopes and disappointments another person represents, especially when maybe i have certain doubts about my judgment in the people who get close to me. i think a part of me never wants to try again unless it's a sure bet, of which there are none. get too close, and you lose someone you could have been longtime friends with. get too close, and you could get hurt or hurt someone else. get too close, and you could lose yourself. get too close, and you could be getting close to the wrong person.
i am confused.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
it's my disappearing that's most unsettling. people seem able to accept everything else.
To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you
In a room without a window in the corner I found truth
-shadowplay
Hung out with Josh, Lawrence and their friends in San Francisco last night. Josh started talking to me about a writer and said he sometimes writes about ninjas. I said, "Excuse me, did you just say ninjas?" Curtis and I have been running some motif about ninjas. I told Josh that ninjas have dominated my mind and conversations the last two days. He said he thought everyone had a little bit of ninja in them. He looked at me and said, "You clearly are the black ninja," and I started laughing. Later, as we were leaving this guy waved goodbye at me and then someone said, "She's walking with us." "This is so awkward!" I said and everyone laughed saying he'd waved prematurely. This would be a good time to do a "ninja vanish" he said, and Josh looked at me in surprise.
"You know how sometimes people can get on the same wavelength and think the same thing? I think you dominated the wavelengths tonight and willed ninjas into our minds."
Later, I called a truce between Curtis and I. We have a lot of energy running between us with the potential for something great and the potential for power struggles that could collapse into open enmity, and we have a way of being provocative in how we test each other's boundaries and try to get to know each other. I feel like I've gotten to the place in my life where I don't want to flirt by mental sword fight. A little is okay, but I want to be able to ask a question and get an honest answer, and be able to be nice and genuinely care about someone without being made to feel lame because the other person isn't at that place yet to be straightforward. So hoping to curb the combativeness between us, we were texting and I wrote, "To be honest, I would much prefer to fight next to you than against you." And he responded, "For sure! You seem mindfuckingly dangerous!"
He's charming, probably more progressive than other people his age the way I was. I have to be careful. I go chasing after people who are mentally quick but may only be giving the illusion of depth, and who aren't necessarily mine, and if I compromised now, it's a repeat of the same lesson from two years ago, and I don't want that.
I don't want Fremont to regress me. I don't want to make bad judgments. I need to get to the next level. I want only what's mine.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
"how could you read me?"
"maybe i'm the white ninja to your black ninja."
"how do you know i'm the black ninja?"
he laughed. "oh, i know you're the black ninja."
okay. but anyone who's seen me play basketball can make that assumption.
"do you ever rewatch a movie you watched when you were younger and catch something you didn't catch before?" he asked.
"Like what?"
"I just rewatched The Lion King. You know how Nala's always jumping on Simba and he can't do anything about it? In the end, when Simba jumps on Nala and pins her, I never noticed it before but she gets this look in her eyes like she wants to pounce the hell out of him."
My mind immediately went to Michael's birthday party where he had told me his way of dealing with people was just looking at them like they're completely stupid. We had a staredown where he tried to give me that look, and I flashed him one that I would eat him if he tried. He'd started laughing, and he has such a beautiful laugh, but I remember thinking he was too immature for me.
Later, he quoted the movie and I asked him if he was still thinking about his Lion King revelation. He wrote, "Yes, both untamed female predators and hidden meanings."
I wrote back, "Enviable food for thought."
"I'm inclined to believe you'll agree that thinking isn't near as much fun when you can't share the thoughts."
This kid's a mental wrestler. I don't know his intelligence but his quickness is a match. I have to stay very focused with him. In fact we both are--I watch his pupils dilate when we talk, and I can feel mine as well. We get hyper focused. Show a card, see a card, tests and tests and tests and tests. But they're games, at least on the surface. I've always been a sucker for someone with a quick mind. But I've learned before that when chemistry is based in a mental dance like a dog chasing its own tail, even though the sheer act is incredibly enjoyable if not because it's so frustrating, but then you get so caught up in the mental gymnastics that you don't realize you really don't know this person. You may not even like him. So I'm staying wary.
But it's funny he brought up Lion King and its particular dynamics. "All black except for two yellow eyes burning through darkness like the fire of a Tigress before she's pounced."
Women who have warrior spirits can not rest unless under protection of a man who is a greater warrior. She will not trust or respect anything less. These women tend to mate for life. Avatar was a nice example of this breed of woman as well. The two sides of the coin are the warrior and healer. In the course of a lifetime, she has the potential to embody both.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
We were driving down this long stretch of road, and on one side was a towering rainbow anchoring a dark thunderstorm of magnetic proportions, and on the other, the sun was setting through parted clouds, filling the sky with blinding light. We were driving down the middle, each phenomenon dominating its side of landscape like raging water from a parted sea. the tension rose to a climax and suddenly dissipated, the rainbow evaporating and the sun disappearing into the clouds. We looked into the other cars, searching the faces of the other drivers. For the most part, no one seemed to notice.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
A Trinity Triad is a 9 triangle whose 3 points are composed by 3's, therefore an infinite number of trinities anchoring an infinite triad.
Tomorrow is a Trinity Triad. 03/03/12 (3). It will be a precursor for the next two big ones, 12/12/12 and 12/21/12.
Because 12/12/12 is a perfect balance, I am particularly interested in this date (particularly because it's 3x 3 for 9, plus 2 for an umbrella influence of 11.
9 always seeks 11 for 22.
3 Noted Displacements of Reality From the Past Week
1. The conversation that my dad claimed didn't happen (but which my mom later said she knew it had to have happened, because he had mentioned it to her when he got home). But doesn't explain why he started the conversation with something that didn't happen (giving 2 tickets to my cousin) and mentioned something inexplicably untrue (my uncle is in China).
2. I went to visit Josh and Lawrence at their seats at the game, bringing only a bottle of water that my dad had bought for me. They bought me a beer and I remember how hard it was to balance both the beer and water, seeing as my right arm is not reliable. At the end of the game, as I had my water in hand, Josh claimed that it was his. I knew pretty sure it was mine but he still said it was his, so I gave it to him.
3. Yesterday, Michael woke up and asked where Jason (our adopted little brother) was. We didn't know what he meant, and he said that he had woken up in the middle of the night, and Jason was laying in bed next to him. Michael was surprised and happily called out, "Little brother..." and asked him what he was doing here. He said he needed to rest a little. Later, Michael woke up because Jason got out of bed. "Where are you going?" he asked. "Bathroom," Jason said. Michael said that after he woke up, he looked in the bathroom and saw Jason there. Except, Jason was never at the house. And when he stays at our house, he never shares a bed with Michael. So Michael had been looking for Jason around the house, absolutely convinced that we were playing a joke on him by saying Jason wasn't there. We asked him questions about what happened forwards and backwards, and his story never changed. He was thoroughly confused, saying that I must have driven Jason over, and when I said no, he said it must have been his mother, or Jason took the bus. But then he said quietly to himself, "But then how did mom hear him knock if he walked?" I've never seen Michael so sure of something that wasn't verifiable in this reality.
So I told my dad about it, and strangely enough, we felt the same thing. Whether it was a dream or hallucination, Michael was convinced this happened to such an absolute degree, we both worried if something had happened to Jason, and Michael had been visited by a ghost. So we got on the phone and found him. He confirmed he hadn't come over, but in fact, he had been up all night in the bathroom throwing up from stomach flu. When we told Michael that Jason hadn't been there, he was thoroughly confused. "Then who was in my bed?" he asked. "Who was it I was talking to?"
Monday, March 1, 2010
baltimore man strangles 14 year-old boy breaking into car
he'd found out his 6 year-old daughter had leukemia about 4 months before. said he couldn't process it, couldn't stand to see his beautiful daughter with that bald head, with her skin that color. and then that little thai kid was breaking into his car on a dare, and he just lost it. he said he didn't realize it'd happened until it was over, and what he remembers most was staring at his hands and being completely unable to understand that they were his.
december 12, 2001
