that day upon the plains

veins in my hand stand out
making skin a stained glass window,
the veins connective metal holding glass together
so that light color and beauty can shine through.

i seek to hide my scars;
the stories that decorate my skin,
all the history: hurt pain love and fear
contained within...
the fire of a neuron,
the composition of a cell,
sources below that sing from well
springs of intuition,
tinged with recognition,
of something familiar...
deja-vu?
if i can remember,
why can't you?

a critique of many things

ok, so i am officially livid right now. after watching the first part of the critique of the story of stuff and reading people's comments i am absolutely shocked at how STUPID and in denial people are about the reality of the world we live in, though why i am so shocked i really can't say. accusing the story of stuff of being leftist indoctrination is totally ridiculous, our entire socialization/civilization process is almost by definition indoctrination and the educational system the most widespread and institutionalized method of disseminating ideas and culture that human beings have developed (yet, humans are ingenius at such creations and i'm sure the version for the new millenium will be rolled out soon enough). i read a comment from a "concerned parent" stating that opinions are like asses, everyones got one, but they don't have the right to put it on their kid. that parent is apparently unaware that socio-cultural norms are one specific group's opinion as to how everyone should act and that by being alive in this "civilized" age of microscopic controls and information overload other people's opinions are literally being rubbed all over their child: someone elses' opinion as to what is safe to put in lotion or shampoo, someone elses' opinion as to what should and should not be put on your television, written in newspapers, published in books, done to your food,etc.

all of my life i have been trying to figure out what is so utterly disappointing about being a human being sometimes and i finally feel like i'm making some progress: human beings love patches. a patch for the economy, a patch for our emotions, a patch to cover what we think is ugly, a patch to cover the pain, but patches are not repairs. we have spent a boobly trillion hours of thought, megatrillions of watts of energy and gagabazillions of dollars looking at ways that we can patch life to make it more wearable to our liking instead of addressing the most important issue of all: why does life fit us so damn uncomfortably in the first place? could it be our illusory perceptions of life and all of these beliefs we hold about how it SHOULD be (and the belief that it should be anything other than exactly what it is in the first place) instead of basing our perceptions on real knowledge and understanding of WHAT IT IS?

no wonder we can't get it together and accept peoples, cultures and beliefs with open hearts and minds, we can't even accept the single most basic principle of all creation: that it exists exactly as it is and no other way. we wonder what happens to people to make them go crazy, why so many people fail to grow up whole with any understanding or appreciation of this wonderful and crazy world. every single day of our lives we are brazenly lied to about the nature of this existence. every. single. day. we shield children our children, crippling them, we show them the rainbows and butterflies, but don't tell them rainbows are ephemeral and butterflies get eaten by crows. no wonder as we grow up and are confronted with realities that trump the lies ingrained in us, when we learn that rabbits don't hide eggs (that they don't even lay eggs to begin with), that the blue of the sky exists only as a conversation between our eyes and our minds, that no jolly fat man is the source of christmas presents, that this world is just as cruel as it is beautiful, we panic; we aren't raised with these realities as part of the basic information of life. i think that often adults are embarrassed because they don't really know it either, but won't look past their embarrassment to see what they can find out about it; or simply admit their ignorance. so we create patches to cover it, to hide what we don't know and instead of admitting that we don't know we perpetuate the illusion of wholeness with a patch of a lie.

we are a country plagued by personal crises, it's been documented that the united states is the most mentally unstable country on this earth: the twenty-something life crisis, the mid-life crisis, the empty nest crisis, the seniorhood crisis; there is absolutely no other place with the same widespread manifestations of mental, emotional, and spiritual disorders, why? i obviously have no absolute answer but i suspect it has something to with the fact that we are taught to view the cycle and progression of life as a negative thing, that youth is better than age, elasticity better than wrinkles. we have created whole industries out of keeping certain deceptions alive and off the disharmony that is created when the illusions clash with the truth; the models you see in magazines, even they don't actually look like that. there is nothing other than a particular perspective creating these negative relationships with the life cycle and process, it is what it is. time, life and exposure take their toll, nothing in life is free, least of all life itself. that unnerving paradox, the price we pay for being our selves is our selves.

while this may seem unrelated to where i started, i promise it's not. we are raised believing we are the coolest kids in school, that every other country is jealous of us, that by virtue of nothing more than being born in this country every single one of has can grow up and lead it, swim the english channel, find the cure for cancer; children are wiser than our culture and society gives them credit for and they know it's not true. we are not all leaders, we are not all scientists and mathematicians and we are not all athletes. half of the trauma of growing up could be eliminated by acknowledging and accepting the fact that everyone is not an alpha male (and thank life for that, imagine if everyone, not just politicians and business people, spent their lives vying for control of this handbasket). because what we learn as children forms the foundations of our world it is hard to let these ideas go as we grow. those that would accuse a 20 minute long film that is more about the way we look at and consider the material world around us rather than a subtle attempt to brainwash children into believing that we're destroying the earth, which we are by the way, are keeping these unhealthy illusory beliefs alive and thriving. lies cloud vision and make it impossible to see reality; and there is no windex to eliminate the veil leaving a streak free shine, the only treatment is complete honesty, something we are not taught to treasure because it's decidedly not easy, simple, comfortable or quick and has no monetary value (though if you observe the results of people who take this long road, success, however you measure it, is often the result). and so the world will continue to turn, and we will continue to destroy it because we lack the courage to do anything else. that's enough for the day, other than this, in my eyes our greatest crisis is the horrible friction that exists when what is real inside of us presses against what is real outside of us, and we find they are not the same. achieve a unity of interior and exterior and you achieve peace. and to those that might want to come back with snarky comments about me being a tree hugging lefty: yeah...and... what's your point? i don't write to preach, i write to teach. do what you will with it, just be well.

the story of us

i wore nothing but myself that day;
no preconceived notions of who i was or what i was about.
clad in slim limbs and torso, waist small. ungainly.
a cardboard box could have covered me and i would have felt none the worse for it.
sunny blue skies.
waiting.
for trains to arrive and trips to begin.
cigarette.
waiting.
arrival. standing. smiling.
he is here now and i never want him gone again.

silence.

singing in silent vibration with the all mighty stars of my inner-verse.
uniquely.
almost a uni-brow; doesn't bother me.
almost a man now with boyhood still splaying its gangly arms about him.
holding.
for just a second.

divine.

mine? the question was already there when i asked how he was.
like a seagull: mine?
yours.
there was no question on my end.
only warmth spreading along my spinal column to lips already poised for kissing.
waiting. still.
arms untangling, first steps taken, towards a journey that would lead us else where.
unexplored unchartable realms.
dreams?
reality?
who's to say?
i cannot and i was there.
music. smoke. candy.
a trilogy of greatness that would shepherd us through frustration, modulation, undulation and suffering.
don't worry. i didn't know this then.
now.
only the pain and pleasure of wanting and not receiving,
the bounty of your smile,
getting lost in that gap and finding myself in your eyes.
waiting.
passing through hillsides, lifetimes.
so secure in ignoring the present,
allowing it to slip through fingers better suited for touching.
laying heads and memories together to ride baselines of light and sound.
the future not yet come to pass.
only. now. then.
knowing what i seek lives inside the smile that not only mocks, but tantalizes me to love.
you.
me.
together we are.
love.

yo from the flipside of the atlantic

hello lovers. i know i've promised a website to tell of my escapades, but all things with time. until then i'll be keeping up with myself through my blog. i know a lot of folks are still a little unclear as to exactly what i'm doing in dublin, why i have traveled for 24 hours halfway across the world, and where exactly all this is going. there are a few different ways to answer that question, one is i haven't the slightest clue. another is i'm listening to the voices in my head, and not in a schizophrenic way. the closest to any sort of universally understandable truth is that i am on my walkabout. i realized some time ago that i was beginning to cave in on myself. i have always been known for being distinctly, well...me. never the same, rarely fashionable, often obtuse and self-righteous, but always my own self. lately that hasn't been as true as i would like it to be. maybe it was coming home after being gone since i was 17, which now at 24 feels like such a long time ago though i remember it like yesterday, maybe it is simply being of the quarter life crisis age. my own belief is that i am manifesting a larger disharmony in our culture and lifestyle, a disconnectedness that slowly destroys from the inside out. i love my home and it environs more than i love most anything i know of, and yet it is so unhealthy that at times it literally brings a tear to my eye, and we all know how difficult producing tears is for me. a cultural and lifestyle perspective that says to enjoy sex, smoke weed, drink alcohol, work to live instead of live to work is bad and punishable from fines to social stigma, while to rob one's own people, to live like a robot instead of a human being, to limit ones vision and ones worth to what one can procure at a store is all rewarded. i'm not sorry to say it because it needs to be said, but that just isn't right. the favorite fallback phrase of americans is that if someone doesn't like our overbuilt, overprotective, and generally ridiculous country then they can just go back to wherever they came from. well i won't be able to return to the universe until the day i die, but i have no problems leaving for now.

now i don't know what day it was, and it doesn't matter, but one day i just got really tired. i got tired of putting in the effort of being my self, of believing that calm is strength, of always doing what i saw to be the right thing when i was so rarely rewarded for it and more often ridiculed and pestered incessantly for doing so, when it seemed like everyone else was getting along just fine going along with the world as if all was well. what i failed to perceive is that those people were not themselves, they were living someone elses vision of them, a fashionable one, an accepted one, but one imposed upon them. and i began to do the same, for no other reason than because it was easier. though a fair number of folks i know don't believe me, i am indeed human. i have the same needs to belong and be a part of something, and having always been an outsider in any group i may ever happen to be in (black at a majority white school, picking up trash in a time when to throw something away is a sign of luxury and not extreme and disgusting laziness, black at latino camp, non-religious in the south, not giving a rat's ass if someone is gay at a homophobic university, being from the only part of my family that lives in the east bay with 4 cousins in the south bay being the only other blood for approximately 300 miles, treating homeless people like they are more than a piece of the scenery anywhere, believing in magic on the north american continent, etc.), i had gotten really used to it. my comfort zone existed in otherness. and now it has disappeared, for whatever reason i find no comfort in it anymore, only in me-ness. which happens to be otherness, but hey, you can't win 'em all. i'm now being kicked out of the internet cafe, but more to come, and i promise it won't all be my minds existential wanderings. until next time, be well lovers!

vignettes

it feels like this comes on the caboose of a sporadic semi-melancholy train, but these somethings i wrote long before i considered myself anything of a writer, before blogging even existed. this is a series of vignettes written for an 8th grade assignment derived from the house on mango street, which i hated.  i remember doing the assignment and being livid at having to imitate something i found so displeasurable. vignettes are a very particular writing style, it's like describing every fifth tree in a forest as opposed to giving a description of what the experience of the forest at large is.  if you've read anything i've written you know it will be as the artist sketches, singular points that mean nothing unto themselves, but when strung together they create form and shape the curves of my minds landscapes, and it'll probably be wordy as opposed to the brevity valued in vignettes.  i found these recently cleaning out my room at my family's home in preparation for my next escapade, and was shocked at how relevant some of the feelings and perspective still are. other feelings and perspectives have been turned inside and out and every other possible way. it made me want to re-write the same vignettes an equal number of years later, and i'm sure i will, but not during this blog post.  at some level it made me sad to think that the 12 year old in me was still that alive, and apparently kicking,  but mostly it made me smile.  hopefully this snapshot of a period in space and time will do the same for you, take you back to times when... 

Surprise

i remember when i was around five, my dad came home with a surprise for me.  my little white bike, complete with training wheels and a bell, was waiting for me in my driveway.  the look of joy that spread across my face must have been equivalent to one of someone who had just bought the perfect house.  happily i ran around in my footsies wanting to ride it right then at two o'clock in the morning.  the little bike with the basket.  the basket with snoopy on it.  those were all that mattered to me as i pleaded with my father, "please teach me how to ride daddy, please?" "tomorrow," he promises, "tomorrow."  

Eyes

some people's eyes are clear so you can see all that goes on behind them.  some people's are dark so their true feelings never show.  like my eyes.  they are almost black.  so dark in fact that you can't see the center of them, the pupil.  the eyes as dark as the heart of the devil.  the eyes you could stare into all day and never figure out what they are saying, belong to me.  

some people's eyes, such as my brothers, you can read like a book.

eyes.  some people say they mean nothing.  they mean a lot to me.  mine have a mysterious air about them.  they can change like the seasons.  they can go from black to almost hazel to just regular brown.  when you shine light into them they actually do turn hazel.  my eyes, the ones that are silent like secrets blown to the wind, secrets no one will ever hear.  

My Name

my name is like an inside joke no one understands but me.  when most people say it, it doesn't sound like the music it's supposed to be.  j-i-h-a-n.  it sounds like a melody fading into the early morning dew.  

person of the world.  that's me, what my name means.  the secret meaning behind the obvious. the harmony the rest of the song has left behind.  when i say, it sounds beautiful, as if faeries are humming it while sailing through the sky in boats made of the wind.  

what the rest of the world hears is unimportant.  in my ears it's soft like a summer day before the storm.  

there is so much more to my name than anyone could see.  it's like a tree, simple on the outside, but on the inside rings that go deeper and deeper into a complex pattern that no one but me can see.  

 The Girl That Never Left

"that loud girl that lives across the street" who is she?  where did she go?  no one but me will know.  she is me.  she left because it wasn't where she belonged.  she was like a bird, too wild to be kept confined in her cage.  "she'll come back.  she'll never get away."  yeah, she'll return, because she never left.  she's always there.  "why is she there?" she can't leave.  she won't allow herself to.  even so, you can feel the sadness she left behind.  she's gone.  gone to never return to the cage she doesn't belong in.  

"that girl that lives across the street" who is she? where did she go?  no one but me will know.  she is me. i left because it wasn't where i belonged.  i was like a bird, too wild to be kept confined to my cage.  "she'll come back.  she'll never get away."  yeah, i'll return, because i never left.  i'm always there.  "why am i there?" i can't leave.  i won't allow myself to.  even so, you can feel the sadness i left behind.  i'm gone.  gone to never return to the cage i don't belong in.  

hiatus

been gone for a minute now i'm back again

the places and spaces i've been?

as always a question more loaded than a down and out celebrity;

here there everywhere in between farther yonder near far inside over and out

losing and finding my mind along the wandering ways that i call home;

spiraling outward to sink into myself the way quicksand greedily pulls at toes,

and the people they're attached to.

mexico san diego the town davis west hollywood san leandro yo mama's house,

whatever the name of the place, if i am there, it is called home.

sometimes i leave,

convinced that its warm confines are somehow too soothing warm and restful for my soul,

so out into that wide cold world i go,

ripping and tearing at the tendons that keep me together, that keep me whole,

striving for piecefulness

the tranquility of being billions of particles to the wind,

without the unifying voice that breaks from my diaphragm 

and runs for the border of me,

up through long tunnels that continually strive to keep it down,

over bumpy and unstable landscapes prone to halitosis

past teeth that clench in vain to keep it in,

through the gaps, and out of my mouth...

only to find it's way back home again;  

ah! the circle of life!

but where are timon and pumba when the fear freezes my chest

and the weight of it presses all the air from me?

forces it to evacuate and become a refugee,

always searching and so rarely finding somewhere new to call home.

oh! but what does it matter when the world is my oyster,

full of glittering pearls of beauty wisdom friendship love and truth;

who can begrudge a journey so fantastical as to blur the lines between here

and the realms of the unreal?

not i.

so i continue upward along my spiral,

often slipping, sometimes falling,

but never ceasing to move

towards cloud nine,

which i have never really left, but somehow seems new and fresh

trapped inside the double helix.  

home again. home. again. 

philosophy 101

it is two weeks into a new semester. a man walks into a room and says:

i am god.

23 pairs of eyes stare at him incredulously, flashing neon signs of anger, offense, discontent and fear while 23 mouths flap open to voice objection.
2 pairs of eyes look befuddled and a little sick while 2 mouths beneath them are screwed tight.
1 pair of eyes blinks while 1 mouth opens to say: ok, i can see that.

a particularly righteous voice rides above the rabble, rabble, rabble of indignation to say: no you're not.

22 pairs of eyes flicker to the speaker while their head-roosts nod in agreement.
2 pairs of eyes continue to look anywhere but here.
1 pair of eyes scan the room, eyebrows raised.

the man asks: how many of you are christians? 24 hands are raised.
muslims? 1 more ascends.
there is a hand unaccounted for that remains unbidden.

if we are made in the image of god, an omnipotent one, and if all things come from and are made of this god, i say again: i am god. can you prove me wrong?

25 pairs of eyes glaze over and 25 mouths are closed while 25 minds struggle to reconcile lifetimes of dogma and mental conditioning with the geometric logic they have just encountered.

one pair of eyes glows like dawn and dances like spring while one mouth opens wide in a smile.

can you find me?
do you see me?
care to feel me?
no?

you fail.