Espresso Me Slowly

Hungry

2011-06-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

It’s you and me. We have this wind right here and it’s blowing hard I can feel that heat that breath that long, long pause. Don’t see those clouds hazy white don’t see that moon hung so still. Wisps of black around my face, cold breeze brushing against your neck but that breath so warm hungry against my chest, that touch so light, shivering down your back. Sand is soft and waves are light and all you hear is this breath so loud. No holding back no stopping now this long, long moment a hundred cracks, ready to be broken, hushed and hoarse.

Providence

2011-05-31T15:08:00.000-07:00

Grace separates my sentiments from the churches around me and I feel as if I must always betray one for the other, faith for community while knowing that at the same time that one is never complete without the other. There can't be a balance for this, but an ideal that should never settle, never compromise while at the same time so deeply seated in compassion an ounce of bitterness not be found.

Perhaps in that irony it is the quality of their grace that provokes and disgusts me, and the quality of mine that gives it such power over me. This is, and has always been my wall, Christ notwithstanding; to spurn a God who is accompanied by such condescending ignorance is derisively easy. To live and love a God surrounded by it is infinitely harder, but strangely enough...or perhaps not so strangely...my faith has only grown the more adamant for it.

Who are you that boasts of Godliness to weep and plead over my salvation, then wield such fear-steeped ignorance on a purpose you have never fathomed?

And who am I that claims and clings to tatters of a recycled faith to scoff at the fears and anger of a people that seek comfort more than truth, wallowing in my own condescension? I am no better and no worse, living in a balance when I should be striving for an ideal.

Patience

2011-04-28T16:13:00.001-07:00

I luxuriate in Your presence, bathed from head to toe in this warm, cotton-soft glow. It starts delightfully, playfully, spring in step, bubbling somewhere in the corner of me, and then with a gleeful rush fans into a thrumming, vast and roaring, deep and rooted satisfaction. It feels confidently, solidly right, like the firm, living warmth of oak and bark beneath my hands. It feels grounded and it feels good. Purposeful. Intentional. A luxuriating passion that can appreciate and delight in waiting, rolling in an eager contentment for the here and now, yet brave enough to leap at Your call. It's a fullness that beckons life and laughs a heady, wild and daring joy.

beautiful

2011-04-20T23:25:00.000-07:00

When clouds roll like ocean waves
ablaze with such golden warmth
that beams to touch the jasmine sky
and falls to break on days gone by.

Firm

2011-04-05T14:15:00.001-07:00

How do others do it? Without You I am lost, floundering in the ragged folds of life and overwhelmed by such beggaring immensity that my forlorn pride becomes my rock, poorly built and poorly hewn as it is.
You are this sharp and clear breath I take every 4 beats, clearing my mind and enlarging my soul. I find myself larger, I find myself stronger, I find myself bigger...encompassing all of ...this. Ready, clear and calm and ready.

Unfinished.

Stand

2011-03-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

You are the breath and heart and beat and life of me. I stand in Your footsteps and let the far blue swallow me whole, to break alive and free.

Simple

2011-03-15T14:33:00.001-07:00

Because we are all brothers and sisters.

Donate to the Red Cross for Japan.

Time

2011-03-09T12:52:00.001-08:00

If right now, you see a question lying in front of you and you do not know what it is, then ask. Click there below, email me, but ask. There's an answer waiting here for you that I have not heard yet but has weighed upon my shoulders for a long while.

2011-03-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

I sit here now with the chime of new emails in my ear, that sterile, grey cubicle smell mixing with the steady, never ending click clack of keys on a keyboard and I can't help but think that less than 48 hours ago, I was standing waist deep in rushing, running, white water, digging my feet against the pulling current, arms locked on an uprooted sapling with the wind at my back and that beautiful river roar resounding in my ears. I want to smile and I want to laugh because here and now, it is my secret become my joy.

Bebo Norman

2011-02-23T10:35:00.000-08:00

Windy, blustery evening the cold wind whips around us.
Crackling, leaping fire, weaving warmth around our faces
There we sit, feet covered in sand, a silence captured,
crashing waves to touch starry nights.

"Take my heart and wring it out
in Your hands and watch it all collapse.
Take Your love and drive it in
into my soul and never leave again.

Because I am so afraid that I'll find myself alone
Looking for a savior, looking for a home.
I am so afraid that I'll find myself alone
Looking for a savior, looking for a home.
So don't leave me here, alone.
Don't leave me here, alone.

All your hopes and all my pride
all this time, to watch it all collide.
And everyone seems to say you can work it out
Under my skin I'm shaking and I can't get out

I am so afraid that I'll find myself alone
Looking for a savior, looking for a home.
I am so afraid that I'll find myself alone
Looking for a savior, looking for a home.
So don't leave me here.

It's not what you said, it's all in my head
And I throw my anger at You instead
Don't give up on me, I want to believe
That You'll never leave me because
I am so afraid that I'll find myself alone
Looking for a savior, looking for a home.
I am so afraid that I'll find myself alone
Deep into the ages, deep into the fold.
I am so afraid that I'll find myself alone
Looking for a savior, looking for a home.
So don't leave me here, alone.

Lonesome

2011-02-21T13:42:00.001-08:00

I whisper secrets into your ear that you breathe back on lonesome lips and carry me high to float upon such stunning silence the sunset breaks. I see you far and deep and would take one more step, always one more step.

Along the edge

2011-02-14T16:15:00.000-08:00

The only thing I am fighting are shadows and they stem from the raw core of me. I forget that You are honor and integrity, a moving, thrumming passion that revels in freedom, I forget that You are the hero, not me.

Run

2011-01-31T20:48:00.000-08:00

You are with me in that gleam across this rising sky. Scatter me fast and scatter me wide, leave my tether at your side. I'm safe and locked here in your hopes and fallen fast asleep, wake me when the sky is near and our stars beg to weep.

Dream

2011-01-05T14:30:00.000-08:00

I will fight you atop the risen stars with a fierceness that you cannot staunch. I will fight you beneath the tumbling waves, unrelenting and absolute. No one will ever hear of our struggle, no songs sung of heroism, no tears will trail their meandering paths. None will ever know what I have done and what I have saved, and my name will seamlessly fade into the veiled heart of hearts; but you will never win. I will fight you until the breath beats sharp and quick from my body and my eyes, ever locked onto yours drifts shut. I will win and from the frailty of your threats grow ever stronger.

Stop

2010-12-10T23:47:00.000-08:00

I breathe in your every waking moment. It gives me heart and hope.

incomplete

2010-12-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

I want to see individuality as an honor, not an entitlement. I want to hold this freedom of expression, of dress and walk and hope and talk as a responsibility to the quality of humanity that I am, to the values that hold me firm and clear. I do not want to be so enticed by that addictive confidence, masking quiet shame.

Florence

2010-11-30T01:19:00.000-08:00

Because when I do, I do heavy. Like an avalanche of emotions, tearing and pulling, eagerly waiting hungry for something. Life doesn't allow for that heaviness though, life doesn't wait for it, life doesn't bend for it. I wish I could say that's all I know, all I see. But I know how to be feather-light too. I know how to laugh and tease. I know clicks to the right, to the left, to the right. I'm a concrete worker, I'm a lumberjack and I built this here to stop the heavy. Because it doesn't just wash you away; it washes me too.

Snow Leopards

2010-11-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

This can't be it, there must be more, somewhere in the lost corners of earth. Somewhere in sea and sky and life and love in hidden, forgotten cracks. There must be more music and there must be more joy, deeper sorrows to drink of and exultation to strive for. This can't be it, the huff and puff of straw and wood and brick; though my arms and head and life all fight to win this plastic race, deep down inside in a hidden corner of my heart I start to see.

Gasp

2010-11-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

Bring me to my knees to fall beneath the far soft sky and place my hand on chest to wonder at such years gone by. Where's that halt, that quick drawn breath, that stammer in my heart and step, where's that beat, that swirling beat of heart and red and breath and heat. I lost it sometime long ago, stolen fast and hard from sight in raven hair and red, red lips underneath this blue moonlight. The drums are beating, flickering fast, thrumming jazz the shadows cast, we meet and speak 'round and 'round and fight and love without a sound. Just step quick step and hand clasping hand, eyes found deep in eyes held fast. Here's that halt, that quick drawn breath fled from lips to teasing depths and finally no longer on my knees, black waves fallen and passion freed.

2010-09-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

I am so hungry for adventure my heart is soon to burst. I long to feel silken clouds trail wispy strands through my fingers and hear my heartbeat drum in the crevices of dark earth. I want to meet the star-swept horizon and look it in the eyes, feel the far and high rock beneath my feet. I need to see what's over the mountain, and ever on, ever on.

Show me rich cultures of laughter and wine, what desperation breaks and hope springs free. The courage of humanity in brimming, staunch faith; innovation and creativity daring to escape that neutrality of sarcastic agnosticism, that guise of unthinking, uncaring passivity in the stubborn, shallow dedication to the simplicity of political correctness, to rise in knowing, faithful compassion and finally embrace a humbling wisdom and single truth. Show me!

2010-09-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

There is a trust here and it is quite a beautiful thing. A heady, intoxicating faith. A clear-eyed readiness.

Purpose, that's the word. A calm, strong, ready purpose.

Grace

2010-09-08T15:53:00.001-07:00

Many times instead of using Grace as a gift of love we bestow upon another we use it as an excuse for our own prejudice and failings - condescendingly giving grace in a false show of humility and love to those who have never wronged our persons but have only infringed upon our imperfect sensibilities. This is made all the worse when we have convinced ourselves in the name of godliness and love that we are doing a great thing. We are throwing the blameless and innocent to the wolves so that we may be convinced of our own heroism when we rescue them. God forbid the innocent ever becomes convinced that our judgment of them is truth and that their naivete finds them wanting because it is not as aggressive as the social hierarchy we idolize.

Perspective

2010-08-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

In the reverent morning we marched, through a quiet, lonely dawn that slowly arose to unveil soaring mountaintops, long emerald green pools falling into thundering waterfalls and deep, lost valleys. A soft azure sky scattered handfuls of wispy clouds across the horizon; perhaps we were trespassers, not in our valiant hearts or our innocent intent but in our determination to conquer, to raise the flag of our own glory above that which does not care, above stoic granite and proud, ancient bark. Who were we to dare to pit flesh against rock in what must seem a petulant tantrum to that which has weathered so many and will easily endure so many more? I climbed to conquer, I climbed to win, I climbed to defeat the undefeatable. And when finally I emerged scarred and torn with a fierce weariness, head held high to tread upon the windswept, barren rock and look down upon the graceful universe at my feet I see a stunning humility, I see that I have not conquered anything. For a brief moment I have been allowed to experience the world from this far-reaching gaze, to feel the high wind proud against my cheek, raise my arms and bathe in the tall, sapphire sky and rejoice in the knowledge that I am that small, the world around me is that agelessly beautiful, and that I am become larger in heart and in spirit than the reaches of my own intent. I share this wonder but for a moment, before I must step back down and leave this silent guardian to its lonely secrets gazing effortlessly into the velvet night sky.

Beer.

2010-04-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

I am a self-confessed, snobby, pretentious, unashamed beeracholic. I love beer to the point of microbrewerism. Bring me my microbrews in those expensive goblets and I am a well-satisfied and joyous man. There are few things I can think of as relaxing after any type of long day and as I venture deeper into beautiful, dark-hazeled tones of chocolate, mocha and espresso with hints of cherry here, velvety follow-throughs there and a teasing maltiness I find a wondrous world open to me.

Favorites:
1. Rochefort 10 - Complex with dark fruit flavors, some malti sweetness, spices and fruit tones, perfect beer.
2. Kasteel Cuvee du Chateau - Subtle cherry and oak flavors with sweet brown sugar.
3. Bruery's Two Turtle Doves - Chocolatey with a slight nutty, pecan flavor.
4. Ommegang Three Philosophers - Malty and Chocolate with hints of raspberry.
5. North Coast Rasputin XII

Mentions:
Allgash Curieux - A light beer for dark beer drinkers. Hints of coconut and vanilla.
Requiem Espresso Stout

Nostalgia

2010-04-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

What are you staring back at me, red-brick warmth and beveled skies? I close my eyes and leaning back wonder, wonder at such lingering mysteries that drift throughout a rumbling sky. Sometimes I forget in the morning haze what makes me ME, click-click like tap dancing shoes and it's good to remember my rhythm beating, sitting on an old park bench, falling in love with sun-burnt leaves and old soul blues.

Desert End

2010-03-29T21:16:00.001-07:00

Oh here it comes the rising voices
steeped within such soaring joy
and my soul, breathless, weeps to see
such glory unveiled in front of me.

March 27

2010-03-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

Integrity and discipline

Everyone is scared, everyone is running and hiding from something.

I need to be stronger, I need to be faster, I need to be smarter, I need to be braver.

I need to be more capable
I need to be more confident
I need to be relentless with myself.

Compassion

2010-02-17T15:41:00.000-08:00

She lies there covered in seething scars that vein red and cracked across her back. Gnarled and weathered with an unyielding defiance, she snarls away all preached pity and in her hand a bloodied whip is clutched tightly, red and cracked with fearful use. So who will stay for this wretched ugly who so tightly grasps her own remorse? And who will look to self and see ignorance that gives such red burning to bear?

Perhaps one day a person will dare to have such scars crossed on their backs as they approach to gently take her weeping burden away. And this person might just see a memory of an innocent hand that strongly trusted before strongly betrayed and finally left to fend alone with broken heart sought that nearest bloodied whip to wield.

So who will bear the tortured soul and stride forward amid a rain of blows and bear a red veined back themselves to uncover what once was so harshly trampled?

A Tumbling God

2010-02-11T15:13:00.000-08:00

At first I only see the differences between you and me,
and find myself asking how we are similar,
which leads me to finally admit that we are not,
and leaves me only with the question "why?"
And when I dare to ask myself why you and I are different,
the only answer I find
is Love.

I have learned that how is simply a method, and why is a reason.

Not ironic

2010-01-28T22:41:00.000-08:00

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.”

- Oscar Wilde

I look through the musings I've written down and I find that my mind is fervently passionate about life. I hope one day my life is as passionate as my mind.

All that chains me down is the daring of my imagination.

I talked to someone last night about courage, about strength and determination. It makes me think about the easy things that we so often see as difficult when they are in fact simply exhausting. Exhausting because they are too simple, exhausting because they are monotonous and goes against the true desires of our hearts, not exhausting because they are difficult. Perhaps true difficulty lies in the knowing, in the knowledge of whatever path lies in front of you, in the knowledge of whatever hope guides you and gives you strength. It is exhausting to do what you may not want to do, it is difficult to have the freedom to decide if what you want to do is right...or wrong.

"Thus said the LORD, Stand you in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls." Jeremiah 6:16

2010-01-16T02:37:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I feel lost, I do. I turn around to find solace in silence, rest my head at night upon the promise of an empty near future.

Rapacious

2010-01-12T15:33:00.001-08:00

Come with me, over that far horizon
let us drink of rivers deep until stars kiss the evening sky
and together we'll live the rose red sunrise
until soft morning and joyful dusk intertwine
breath upon breath.

Childhood

2010-01-11T10:22:00.001-08:00

And for a second he let himself lose, let himself give up on this crazy world around him and fall back into a heady, warm rapture of innocence, fade away into beautiful oblivion. For a second.

"So that's what I'm looking for," he murmured to himself. There weren't any moments of profound, life-changing enlightenment but instead a reaffirming of sorts that only gently brought to light such truths he had tried not to suspect all along. Because sometimes the heart does not care about giving up, about strength and drive and future-orientation. Sometimes the heart does not need nor want a plan but only instead to be still for a bit. An escape, he needs an escape. He needs to exploit his own weaknesses. He needs to lose this game. He needs to give up, if only to remember why we struggle so hard to triumph. He needs an escape.

Thank You my Heart, my Breath, my King

2010-01-03T00:40:00.001-08:00

Everyone is just trying to figure themselves out, spun out of wishing well moments. Find some clarity in the craziness of this world, of our lives and dreams. We fall, we break, we rise and we laugh...as long as we don't forget to Love. May this New Year, new decade bring a world that loves its own beauty with more Passion, a humanity that loves one another with more Courage, and a people that love themselves with more Hope. May we all learn to let go a bit of the science and logic and facts that surround us, and fall more in love with the breath and souls of our lives.

Surrounded by Ivy

2009-12-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

Let me feast upon your imagination, slave to that delving mind. Give me a nature that revels in the taste of truth and pursuit of Self, yearning for a purity of philosophy. Let us be faced with the temptation to race one another and instead with fierce defiant hearts dare to intertwine together, heads upon shoulders, arms caressing arms, warm breath against parted lips to discover a once in a lifetime ... understanding.

12/28/2009 -
Because love is not found in the absence of conflict but in the choice to put aside pride and fear, to dare the chance of falling together rather than the certainty of rising alone.

Nothing

2009-12-07T18:16:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry. Today I almost healed the world. I'm sorry. Don't forget. There are walls and there are memories. In the end all we can be is a moment. A moment in this crazy world, learning every second how to let ourselves go, and truly find that identity, that freedom of self and love and hope and belonging that we know we've forgotten somewhere along the way. This is not it, just a filler. But You can do it without me can't you, you've been able to all along. Then what lie am I telling myself, coyote singing tales

Forgive, forgiven

2009-12-02T16:37:00.001-08:00

Enslave me, friend, upon those jilted wings. Lend me not this pallid pity that tempts and teases such whisper winds. Why not put aside the insatiable fool, too fearful of fright to fall and break? I, too, can shatter and clasping yours in mine will gladly spill red heart over marbled hope to be found by our rarest, soft-spoken Friend.

Perhaps one day you will find your beating, breathless hand in mine and fingertips touching we will partake of each others courage to leap and fall and dare that rose-touched, sun-swept sky.

Those Lavender Moments

2009-11-24T09:24:00.000-08:00

In that breathless, lavender moment I saw you and you saw me, we shared a yearning so strong it froze still the world around us, the rising cheers a faint echo as in a flash of deep-hued purple and flying black tresses I found myself desperately crushing you against me, my left hand lifting you high off the ground, kissing you forever.

Longing

2009-11-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

I long for heart and soul and peace, reveling in breathing, beating achievement.

Most Delicious Food in the World

2009-09-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

There's that small list of unforgettable, undeniable foods I cannot escape, that beggars and entices my senses and enslaves me. Here is a list of my favorite dishes and drinks, luscious notches on a widening belt, a trophy harem of delight that forever dances, alluring...teasing...in the corners of my mind. The best of the best in no particular order because God did not gift me with such wisdom.

1. McDonald's Hot Fudge Sundae, no nuts
2. Gyu-kaku's Sukiyaki Bibimbap
3. Houston's Evil Thai Jungle Salad
4. Father's Office Burger
5. Albatros' Carne Asada Burrito
6. Kean's Coffee's Iced Coffee Unsweetened
7. Mon Ami Gabi's Filet Mignon with Red Wine Butter
8. Twisted Vine's Brie Bowl
9. The Hungry Cat's Greyhound Proper
10. Island's Kilauea
11. Brussel Bistro's Steamed Mussels with fresh, warm, cracked sourdough bread
12. Yardhouse's Beer-battered onion rings
13. Starbuck's (I know) Pumpkin Spice Frappucino
14. The Gumbo Pot's Jambalaya and cornbread
15. Sesame Grill's Tiramisu
16. Serendipity's Frozen Hot Chocolate
17. Quizno's Roast Beef sandwich
18. Eat Chow's Garlic Parmesan truffle fries.

Freedom

2009-09-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling is true I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul, if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. It doesn't interest me where you have studied I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep, in the empty moments."
-Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Me me me

2009-08-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

That warm, sinking feeling that comes right after having the world's longest, most delightful stretch that you swear lasted for more than a minute as the morning sun glows shyly behind your window.

The overwhelming nostalgia practically demanding introspection and deep-thoughts-of-self that comes with the deep, toasted warmth of a cup of joe and luxurious roll of a cigarette.

The smooth, throaty, sultry growl of my Isabella and the feel of her tires on the road accelerating in harmony with John Legend's Evolver blasting through my bass as I take a turn I thought I couldn't take, smooth like butter, rich like chocolate, black on black, growl.

Love. Early morning, drowsy love. Late night, candle-burning love. Soft, golden-brown Autumn love. Leather jacket, street vendor, knick-knacks, Christmas lights kind of love.

Respect and Forgiveness

2009-08-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

It is much easier to, without a hint of a doubt, know that someone else is wrong rather than to think for a second, just perhaps, we may be a little bit mistaken.

I read someone's xanga post on forgiveness today, and it stirred up old memories, at times angry and bitter and at other times almost...fondly nostalgic. Suffice to say for myself that in this never-ending, twisting dance of selfish hedonistic "values" and genuine moral compassion, while that seductive Fear-of-self-and-sin wrestles with the knowledge of our own shamed "unholiness," the answer again, comes to a very simple and clean truth: Love.

That battle may rage on forever fueled by our own securities that are, let's face it, byproducts (or perhaps causes) of our humanity, and neither side will ever triumph for too long. We are too afraid of our own demons to give others a Respect that will entail looking deep within them, deep within ourselves. It is much easier to respect someone out of ignorance rather than knowledge because that simple kind of respect doesn't ask us to sacrifice any of our own arrogance; instead it beckons us to bask in the comfort of our generosity and proud, "modern" liberalism. We are not truly respecting the person then, but instead the possibility of that person. And while that is at times a good thing, it is only a beginning that does not give us the power and pleasure of Forgiveness.

"Sometimes we forgive by throwing ourselves into the mess of that person, to be tossed and consumed by the avalanche of their insecurities and fears and be overwhelmed and torn apart in turn by our own wounds brought to light, all in an effort to truly understand who they are and what makes them “tick” until finally at the pinnacle of that knowledge and that point of clear understanding of their motivations, we let forgiveness test its strength against the magnitude of our hurt. I’ve done this, in attempts to truly forgive someone else and be at peace in my heart, but at best it’s an exhausting process that begs for another answer, a stronger motivation than just Forgiveness."

I believe the elusive answer has always been to step away, to cast aside all fears of righteousness and self-righteousness and just simply...love one another as honestly as we can. Love ourselves enough to be honest with the strength of our own hearts, and love each other with a clean, earnest understanding.

Love is the key, a strong, unyielding love for our fellow man and woman. Not love for ourselves, not love for our own self-righteousness, or even love for the righteousness of others, but just simply...Love.

Just like my dad

2009-07-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

Today I got...lost. I drove south from work to find this mall that was half an hour away on the freeway, but after diving through the ridiculous traffic that is the 5 freeway, I exited and proceeded to "wing" my way through Southern Orange County. Winding, long roads bordered by soaring trees not withstanding, I kept the setting golden sun on my right and followed road after road with my windows down and my music blasting until just as I began to wonder if I had gotten TOO lost, I arrived at my destination. Just like that. There's a certain satisfaction that comes from finding yourself in the midst of ...being lost. One though in my mind that I enjoyed as I stepped out of my car with that setting, golden sun shining on the horizon was that my mom would always half complain/half admire my dad's love for always discovering new roads, for never taking the same way twice. When I was young it was the most annoying thing because it always felt longer to get to our destination. I'm glad to find that as I get older, I'm learning that I have a passion and thirst for the journey itself rather than the destination, and that I definitely got that passion from my dad. It's one thing about me that has solidified itself, and no one can take away. An absolute faith.

Roar

2009-06-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

Lend me not such faith and dreams
that beckon me with your pallid pity
Instead for me a grasping hand
to walk with bright, honest fury

Once again

2009-06-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

A jazzy, lonesome night tasting like smoky moonlight dancing on the tip of my tongue. That moment between tomorrow and yesterday when all my worries have faded into quiet gray shadows and each second drifts slowly apart in front of my eyes. My breath beats with a steady, calm certainty against the cool night air and all those every-questions of everyday and everything falls from my shoulders like brown-gold leaves off an autumn tree. It's the boom boom baby of soft blues in your eyes and poetry in your fingertips when God isn't what I should do or who I'm afraid to be or where I'm going next, but instead He's the slow sway of my shoulders, the music that carries me away when my eyes close and that deep, deep satisfaction drifting, drifting like soft, smoky moonlight. It's a night when all my constraints are flung away and I can dare to be free and dare to be alive and dare to stand and breath in the dreams that my soul hungers so greatly for. Dare to believe in childhood loves and the magic of circumstance and coincidence. Where I finally dare to sink into the deep, deep swirling depth of a life-wearied heart and find a living, dancing, singing truth of myself. It's the beginning of a rebirth.

g.e.e.k.

2009-06-13T12:43:00.001-07:00

I heal like WOLVERINE, BITCH.

Victim

2009-06-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

I am such a victim of circumstance, of situation.

Quiet, blue-gray mornings make me want to wrap myself in comfortable melancholy. The evening thrum gives way to mischeviousness, and the touch of the wind upon my face stirs a deep call for wild adventure.

Dare me.

2009-06-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

I want to taste life. Living day to day, plastic breakfast to wine-red evening simply is not enough. I want to inhale life, feel the thrumming softness fill my heart from top to bottom, breathe in, breathe out. Rise the breaking wild to pound at my soul, tear me apart in a raging sympathy and set me FREE. I want to fall into a beckoning, siren-silence and emerge daring, eager.

No more of this suffocating logic, teasing and drowning my heart while cajoling my mind to accept the statistics of life. No more of this armored, rock-walled strength. I want to see that far horizon, great and fearsome, daring me to leave NOW, not in an hour, not in a minute, not when I'm ready but NOW, and in the midst of all my wariness and my fears and all the "but's" and "hold-ons" find that reckless courage and discover a passion once lost, once forgotten.

Break me down to the black and white, tear me apart to taste this Soul. All trappings forgotten, raw and naked, pounding heartbeat. THIS is who I am. I don't want to live in shadows. Give me that burning, bright, roaring spark, soaring free, and DARE me to stand apart. Mock me, ridicule me, shun me, drown me in your shallow comfort. You will not forget me.

I will rise, I will break......then I will FLY.

Well, now.

2009-06-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

The invisible, calling. Intoxicating, one thread.

Mountain top

2009-06-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's all some form of ironic expression, geared at showing the discontent I have with the petty things of this world we like to blind ourselves by. As if somehow, I can constantly keep proving to myself that I will NOT be lost in that whirlwind of existence we dare to call living, and I will REFUSE to succumb to the fears and allure of a life so scared that it cannot breathe. I like pushing buttons; when my quarter-century, post-college responsiblities and declarations of a social security, health care, insurance, 401k-life sternly looks me in the eyes and tells me to settle down, I push back.

It's only been a couple days, but I'm itching for the next step.

Where is that far horizon, who knows what lies beyond?

Breathe

2009-05-19T23:57:00.000-07:00

Pour yourself onto me like smooth river jazz. I want to feel that hungry, rising, moonlit burning. The roar in my ears cry mercy mercy, our fingertips and breath beat a heated churning. Drown me in your deep, velvet linger. Settle soft into the secrets of my every aching fury. Let's harmonize the dusk away and let our fingers dance this tangled yearning. Dare me to trust you with every raw murmur, until I'm broken and lost in every trembling moment. Let's bring this to a close, the pulsing silence a beating rhythm, heart on my sleeve and brush of your lips, honesty tears apart those quiet fears, scattering moonlight across my horizon, I will chase you and taste of that deep, velvet linger until you've captivated me soul by artful soul, and I'll show you a world where we'll discover together the mysteries deep of a scarlet passion and a familiar purpose.

Parody

2009-05-19T13:36:00.001-07:00

I feel like my life, since youth, has slowly evolved to exist as a mockery of the cultures, society, circumstances I see around me. Perhaps partly protection, I've learned to build a wall of superficial excellence that boasts so greatly of itself, delicately intertwining just the right touches of false humility here, a twist of righteous indignation there, and a dose of quiet pride to produce just the right mix of a believeable, impenetrable persona dedicated to both proclaiming a deep, ironic disastisfaction with the values of the world around me, and to shelter and lock in the core Self that I cannot let go of, no matter how often I try.

Perhaps it's cowardice to try to deny yourself, but without ever knowing cowardice one cannot rise up and taste courage. I've learned a hard lesson that everyone falls, and reliability does not mean excellence in success. Reliability (for myself and others) means the strength to get up and fight on.

When I was young, I spent most of my time reading through school, through home, through play. I've always believed that my most influential teachers weren't the ones I had at school, but rather my parents and the values they held that differed from traditional Chinese ideals, and the many authors whose stories and "souls" I read. When an author writes, I believe every part is such an integral reflection of that author's hopes and dreams and fears that the reader has an intimate connection with the author no one else will ever experience. I grew up learning about honor and respect from all the King Arthur tales, from Robin Hood, from Ivanhoe. I discovered the triumph of passion in tales of Hercules, Theseus, Perseus. Courage from Louis La'mour. Responsibility from Dumas. Perceptiveness from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Even adventure from the Hardy boys.

All this introverted speculation grew within me an almost unstoppable, constant self-perceptiveness that I could not turn off, and this in turn led me to realize just how deeply I differed from most people in the world around me. I've always had a desire to be led, to be taught about the nuances of life I saw in other people, and never realized that in this life we don't always get role models or teachers that will reach out to us. Instead, over the years as I saw the gap between my own values and ideals grow from those of other people around me, I learned to wall myself up behind the greatest mockeries I could see.

Everyone is scared of not fitting in, scared of being alone. Everyone has a desire to belong, but for some reason as much as I wanted to I could not let go of "Me." So instead, I hid it. I saw all the values and ideals that people around me believed in, that people believed about me and I became it in the most shallow, absolute sense. Somewhere over the past few years, I've almost forgotten that this is a coat I've put on, I've let others put upon me. I'm an actor living the greatest parody, one born of both fear and sarcasm.

Recently, as I grow older and (hopefully) more responsible, I've learned some hard lessons. No one is going to come along and lead me, and I can either wait around in fear, unwilling to take the responsiblity of my own life upon my shoulders, or I can find the courage to believe in my own values and uphold them against the perceptions of others.

Someone asked me not too long ago why I'm always "protecting" others. I didn't quite know how to answer at that point, (partly because I was a bit drunk) but that question has stuck in my head for a while. It's not because I need to be in charge, I dont like being in charge. It's not because I like being the hero, even though I do, because I would be fine if someone else was taking care of everything well. My friends think it's because I want to be a gentleman, be the "Man," but frankly I don't really give a damn about that. And after thinking for a long while I finally remembered why I always feel this need. I know what it's like to be left out, to be the quiet one in the corner. Most people don't believe I've ever been that, but I remember that so strongly. I know what it's like to LEAVE someone out; ashamedly I've done that enough times to brand that into my heart. I try my best to "protect" because I don't want the quiet people, the ones who may not have the confidence to be in the spotlight to be left out of anything. Most people don't see them, or if they do they ignore them. People always see the result, few ever question the motivations. And why don't I let people "protect" me? Well, I don't think I trust anyone enough to.

Incomplete thoughts.

Time

2009-05-18T10:19:00.001-07:00

It’s contemporary, conflicting, a multitude of perceptions weighing you down begging for comprehension. Where do you go from here? "We’re all beggars simply telling other beggars where we found bread." The game is easy to play, cajoling and tainting, an ecstasy of personality. I miss the simple days, I miss the simple dreams. Those hopes clipped now, wings dropped and hearts lost. I miss soul. Soul flowing, soul filling, soul lifting, soul escaping. Cast aside the shallow tremors that break us apart. I am that book with a different cover.

Judge and rip those assumptions from clarity. Leatherbound and weathered pages. I am that book with a different cover.

"Bucket" list

2009-05-15T15:41:00.000-07:00

As I sit here, dying painfully and slowly from affliction-by-grey-cubicle, my heart darts out to different experiences and adventures that (sometimes) I just...crave. This is a "bucket" list of sorts, not necessarily to accomplish before I die (hopefully), but perhaps to experience in the next year!

1. Learn to hangglide, buy the equipment, get a license, take a friend with me. - $500
2. Sit in an empty parking lot in Crystal Cove on a Sunday, paint a sunset with watercolor and acrylics
3. Take pictures of all the different restaurants I go to, all the different foods I eat
4. Make a cookbook of my favorite recipes
5. Do some serious spelunking
6. Join a good boxing gym
7. Be able to rockclimb with minimal equipment
8. Cook a fabulous 4 course French meal with a goat cheese tart, blackberry currant champagne.
9. Climb Halfdome.
10. Take someone on the most innovative, fun picnic ever.
11. Get better at salsa and tango, go to clubs more often.
12. Get my license and a motorcycle - a few thousand $.
13. Throw a masquerade party for friends.
14. Fly a falcon.
15. Watch the Lion King musical.
16. Go salsa dancing in Spain, sip coffee in France, watch the stars in Greece, and drive on the Autobon.
17. Get two huskie-mix dogs.
18. One more tattoo
19. Learn to sail
20. Start a bookclub. - This is slowly, but steadily underway!

Maybe in the next few years.

Ever-living

2009-05-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

I wonder if most people realize when they are making choices and decisions based upon fears and insecurities, when they are using logic or passion or reason as an excuse to turn away from a introspective clarity of self. There's a certain perverse pleasure in giving into fear, to the shedding of responsiblity from our shoulders and eliminating the possiblity of failure. That pleasure almost tastes sickly-sweet, an addiction that we grow more dependant upon because of its simple familiarity. I don't believe anyone ever truly enjoys taking the safe road, it is only a question of which takes greater credence: the courage to hope and have faith, or the fear of making perceived unforgivable mistakes.

And if anyone ever does realize when they choose the easy, safe way out because of fear, do they ever learn to stop themselves?

There's a joy, a beauty to risking our faith. Faith does not exist for us to hold onto, for us to clasp preciously to our hearts and covet like a treasured jewel, murmuring empty words of contentment and praise. Faith exists for us to use, to taste, to hear and to sing. Faith exists for us to throw out into the wild unknown, trusting that it will not return to us but instead carry us along with it. That is a living faith, a breathing faith, that is Praise in its greatest beauty. It's a wild, passionate journey that will break and encourage and temper and refine our hearts; it is a choice that may not always taste sweet, but will always be clean.

Catch up

2009-05-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted food pics in a while, but there's been cooking going on. Some things to catch up on in the past few months. I really need to get some sort of decent camera.

Creamy penne pasta with prosciutto, crimini mushrooms and basil

BBQ one afternoon with friends:

Special, impromptu tri-tip marinade. I don't really remember everything that went in here but there was a good amount of Jack D and pineapple juice and teriyaki.

Kielbasa, bacon wrapped green onions, tri-tip kabobs

Infamous, mouth-watering, heart clogging bacon-wrapped green onions

Marinated tri-tip with roasted red onions, mushrooms and bell peppers

Another meal: Grilled chicken panini on sourdough with roasted red peppers, caramelized onions, swiss cheese, arugula and roasted-garlic dijon aioli. Also Israeli couscous with sweet potato, shallots, and pumpkin butter.

Baked spinach and sausage ziti with tomatoes and parmesan

Garlic shrimp-stuffed mushrooms

Oh baby, mochiko chicken. Cooked 15 lbs of it.

Desserts: Homemade chocolate ganache, chocolate croissants courtesy of Pillsbury

My pineapple cake!

Fresh blueberry coffee cake

Simple Lemon Icebox Pie

Homemade dark-chocolate brownies, homemade hot fudge, Trader Joe's Vanilla icecream

From a mix, but still mention-worthy. 5lbs of Almond Jello

Doesn't look like much, but my favorite creme brulee thus far: An espresso-coffee creme brulee.

Recap

2009-05-07T16:54:00.001-07:00

I have this desire to start a book club.

Vision

2009-05-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

When I close my eyes this is what I see:

A large, circular, white sandstone fountain, its edges veined with aging cracks and clouds of dust that perpetually settle upon its surface. It is in the center of a much used marketplace, surrounded by wooden stalls and the distant murmur of life fading in and out of the background, filled with a beautiful, sky-blue water that lightly gurgles as the peaceful reflection of distant clouds on its face ripples outwards. The sun is a bright, constant reminder of the midday life surrounding me, reflecting off the rough, sandstone edges of this large fountain I'm standing next to. I can almost hear the sound of bells tinkling, and faintly feel the pleasure and heady joy of life beating around me with an almost tangible, undeniable vitality. Nothing has ever felt so real, yet the only thing that matters in this instant is that it is here that You meet me, the two of us standing face to face in front of this weathered, white fountain in the midst of the marketplace. My head is always bowed a little low, and Your eyes are always looking at me with patient encouragement as if You know where my next step lies, and are but waiting for the joy and pride of seeing me discover it for myself. I see you, dusty and weathered, warm and comfortable, Courage and Peace.

Talking to a good friend

2009-05-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a good friend not too long ago, and as I am very much a "spontaneous" kind of person I usually do my best thinking in the midst of random conversations. As I was telling my friend, lately life has been putting me through a lot of changes, some exhilarating some depressing, others daunting and humbling. While all this is going on, I realize that I've never been in such a state of confusion about myself and the purpose of my existence as I am now. All my life I've been fairly confident about my choices, my decisions, my outlook on life (whether directionless or not), for the first time I discover that I'm not sure about certain issues concerning myself. The ironic beauty of it is I'm finding that I'm more confident and purposeful about my confusion, or perhaps in the midst of my confusion than I was in living out my certainty. Maybe it comes down to the simple idea of fear; before I was so sure of who I was and what I wanted I didn't want to lose that knowledge, while now that I am unsure about myself, I feel as I am about to embark on a journey, armed with nothing more than the values and ideals that God has given me in the deepest corners of my Self, ideals that have been tempered and honed through countless trials of doubt and regret. It sends tingles down my spine and excitement coursing through me to envision what self-discovery awaits, there are few things far more satisfying than cementing your own ideals and being able to stand upon them knowing the reason, the motivation for who you are, and breathing that passion to live your Life.

Once upon a time

2009-04-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

My sin and I are intertwined, like enraptured lovers we lay our faces pillowed upon each other's arms. We are inseparable, captivated creatures, I gazing so desperately into its eyes, and it in turn so hungrily drawing me in. My sin is so rooted in my soul, its touch so close upon my very heart that I cannot escape it, and in honesty do not desire to. It is too hard, too hard. It whispers always in my ears, it yearns for me and I believe I find comfort in it. In my pride and my strength, my hate and my anger, my jealousy and my lust, I believe I am sheltered, cared for, protected, and loved. It yearns for me, it longs for me. And as it so steadily pulls me away, I find that God is always in the distance, beckoning, waiting, a faint figure I fear and do not know.

Yet I know, I know in my mind that we must hate sin, hate it because its touch is disgusting and vile and it withers away our hearts and souls, condemning us to death. I know that we must turn to God instead, to live a holy life and turn our faces away from this familiar lover that I have known for so long. But when I try to discover this God, when I try to live bound by His rules, to live knowing that I am supposed to hate sin, hate it with a deep fury and passion, I find that my sin is so much a part of me, that I hate myself as well. I cannot distinguish my sin from myself, I cannot separate its wrongdoings and my wrongdoings. And the more rules I bind myself with, the more chains I draped around my arms the more hatred I feel for myself. For I hate my sin, but my sin...it mirrors my soul, and I desperately hate the reflection I see. How can I love others as myself, when I do not love myself? How can I understand that I am loved by a God, when I as gaze upon the vile image of sin, I gaze upon my own?

And so I turn away and run, escape to a life of freedom, because I refuse to believe that this beautiful amazing God can be found in rules, because I see that rules only bind me closer to my sin and separate me farther from God. I tell myself I desire to be like David, to have a heart after God's own heart, to be like Joshua in his courage and love, to be like Jonathan in his humility and respect. I want to live God freely, passionately, courageously, I want all these rules and constraints to no longer bind my soul with shall nots and do nots, but instead to be so close to God's heart that I will no longer be tempted by temptation, no longer desire evil, that righteousness and not self-righteousness will pour forth from my heart. And I live this life of freedom, but as I try to believe that I am living as God would have me live, try to believe that I am closer to Him than ever, I discover that He is fading away, becoming a faint figure in the distance I do not know, and instead I find that I am again embraced in the arms of my oh-so-familiar sin. When I freed myself of rules and restrictions, it freed itself as well.

I am a prostitute that has sold my soul a thousand times over, believing that I have the strength of heart to love God alone. I am a pharisee condemning others for living a life that I desperately love. I am Adam who has ventured forth again and again into the garden, and a thousand times I have eaten of forbidden fruit. For my sin follows me wherever I go, it is my closest lover and staunchest protector. It whispers so always in my ear.

I do not know how to live a life free of sin and full of God, I do not understand how I can possibly deny myself and love myself at the same time. It is the greatest irony that when I hate my sin I hate myself, and find that in this self-disgust I hate the sin in other people as well. I will not hesitate in my heart to condemn them and judge them, to ridicule and slander them. I cannot separate our fragile humanity from this parasite that feasts on our souls. But i have finally found why.

It is because no matter how often I have been told that Jesus died for my sins, no matter how often I have heard sermons and speeches and talks and lectures on forgiveness, I have never ever taken the lesson into my soul and never understood the depth and strength of His grace. I am finally learning what it means to "accept Christ," finally learning that Jesus died for my sins, and His blood, His forgiveness, His grace is washing away mine. So often we are taught to hate sin, and we hate it with such a furious passion that we hate it in the people around us, that we judge and condemn them and in doing so succumb even deeper into a mire of our own faults. Jesus stopped us from stoning an adulteress once, but I know that in my heart I've cast far too many stones, because when I see the sin of others I see my own, and I fear and hate it so much that all I can do is run and throw rocks. But I'm learning, slowly and hesitantly what it really means to be forgiven by God. That my sin is no longer my fault, no longer my burden to bear, but just the same my successes are not mine alone either. As I give up my sins to God, I give up my strength and pride, my triumphs as well. But that seems a very very small price to pay to live a life of freedom and joy. Someone told me once that we become like the ones we love, that as we love God more and more, and spend more time in His presence, we will become more like Him: Able to forgive others because we can finally understand that He has forgiven us. That as God loves us despite the crimes we commit against His heart, we will love ourselves and others despite whatever they do against our hearts. And no longer will we have to live bound by rules and fear, but instead we will live free and joyous, like David, having a heart after God's own heart. It is the easiest thing to bind ourselves in rules and constraints, or to free ourselves of them and turn a blind eye to our failings. But to be so completely wrapped up in the grace of God and drenched in His love that we can look our failures in the eye and not see mistakes or condemnation but only the freedom of forgiveness, then will we truly understand what it means to love ourselves, love others, and love God.

God's forgiveness and I lay together like enraptured lovers, breathlessly lost in this embrace. Forgiveness holds me in such a joyful tenderness, and in turn I can only marvel, wonder at this amazing grace, this forever love that clasps me so protectively to its bosom. What beauty, what selfless sacrifice that would shine so brightly against my pale heart. Oh Lord Your forgiveness gives me breath, in your grace my heart will beat, and I will wrap myself in your forever arms, sheltered from the storm of this world.

Lonely, lonely strangers

2009-04-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

Everyone wants to indulge in those idle moments of soft pity, when all our fears and dreams coalesce into a forever instant of desperate clarity. Who finds the courage to fall down burdened with love and loathing, and rise up step by truthful, bright step?

Looking for a secret to love, a mystery to fall upon and into.

Mattress Surfing

2009-04-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

Highlights of the past couple weeks

2009-04-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

Avenue Q - Hilarious, witty, musical with a good-sized dose of raauunch. Great night with friends, and a great after-dinner at Lola's.

Kareoke - Incredibly fun, loud, crazy time of kareoke with no shame whatsoever.

Huge 21st birthday party with drunken roommates, beer bongs, King's cups and an assortement of other foggy memories.

San Diego Zoo - Polar Bears and Tigers and Pandas and Elephants and friends and cake. And beer.

Still learning

2009-04-01T13:09:00.001-07:00

I may not understand yet, or understand fully, or ever reach that moment of clarity but it doesn't mean to stop reflecting.

Reason is not always logic. Reason is meaning, reason is purpose. Reason is an all-encompassing faith.

When we find logic it shouldn't replace faith, when we find purpose it doesn't replace truth.

Instead, Logic lives among many in the shadow of Faith, and Purpose is the brush of Truth's hand upon our shoulder.

Passion is becoming part of that encompassing Faith and Truth and letting it overwhelm and drive us. It is sometimes the comraderie of logic and understanding, sometimes the opposition of. It sometimes accepts and fiercly agrees with Purpose, and other times blithely refuses it.

Passion is not simply a reflection of honesty.

Passion is indulgence, acceptance and embracement of honesty.

To understand better, and let that slowly change who I am. To see how that Faith touches and chooses me. And then to be honest with how much i understand, who I am, what I believe.

Faith and Truth

Geekiness

2009-03-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

I love animals, the Discovery Channel, Planet Earth, National Zeographics, Zoobooks. One of my favorite things to do after coming back from a long, draining day is to spend a couple relaxing hours watching some fantastic animal documentary.

Now my inner geek has found a new, delightful obsession - Animal sounds! This website is so cool, you can hear all different types of animal sounds on here. It may not sound like the craziest friday night ever, but i think it's awesome!

http://westernsoundscape.org/

God

2009-03-19T11:23:00.001-07:00

Godliness is never about doing the right thing because you should, never about benefiting from the results of your actions.

That is our petty humanity finding excuses to hide from our own self-perception, boasting about our commitment to Christ’s ideals and values in an attempt to wallow in the Authority of His life and hide from the depths of our own ignorance and cowardice so that we can impose our own skewed values upon each other. We take advantage and feast upon the skin of God’s Truth to build ourselves higher in our own eyes, yet rarely do we dare to dig beneath the surface and understand the wisdom and compassion behind His actions, to see the true beauty of Jesus which lies in far more than what the naked eye perceives and the human mind understands.

If we dare to take upon the authority of Christ in our relationships with others, then it is our responsibility and privilege to break ourselves and taste of the passion and strength of His love. We cannot sacrifice understanding Compassion for the sake of supposed efficiency in sharing God’s Truth. Without it, without feeling the strength of God’s love fill us, transform us¸ and leave us breathless, no matter what words spill forth from our minds we are not sharing His truth, we are only sharing our own. And that is a greater travesty than whatever perceived injustice we are speaking out against because it is a betrayal and rejection of everything Jesus stands for. It is finding strength and comfort in our own logic, selfish joy in the accomplishment of our own Truth, and above all denying the very compassion and love that bled, that died upon the cross. Without loving each other and experiencing that love, we cannot love Christ but only our own righteousness. And godliness is not found in doing the right thing for the sake of righteousness or justice or accomplishment.

Godliness is found in doing the right thing because it makes your heart sing.

Wicked

2009-03-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

Originally my intentions for this blog was to illustrate and capture what I felt were the important things in my life, the small and large bursts of inspiration or artisticness that in a myriad of ways brings to life the imagination of a person so that I could not only better see my own growth as a person, but to also keep perspective in my heart of who I truly am and what I treasure most.

And now simply, because I cannot find enough words to describe it, I watched a great play that took my breath away and kept me trembling on the edge of my seat, and I watched it with great friends who also took my breath away, who refreshed my heart, and who I created amazing memories and went on spectacular adventures with.

Cafe Chou Chou

2009-03-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

Many great memories were made this past weekend, but I wanted to write about one in particular while it's relatively fresh in my mind.

I had one of the best dining experiences of my life on Saturday night.
My friends and I had made reservations for Cafe Chouchou at 8 pm in San Francisco. None of us had ever been to this place but I had seen the great reviews on yelp, and for the sake of quick decision making decided to try it out.
The first five of us got there around 7:45. We saw a quaint, unassuming small bistro on a indescript corner with simple, neon blue letters spelling the name "Cafe Chou Chou." It looked like it could seat around 20 - 25 people at most. As I walked inside behind my friends, I noticed a tall, reddish-blond haired man whom I thought to be a waiter shake my friend's hand. Initially I thought somehow my friend must have known this gentleman, but then the waiter bent down and kissed my next friend (female) on the hand, and the next two on the cheek. And as I stood there in a bit of confusion and surprise, he turned his attention to me and with a huge grin spitting his freckled face, crushed me tightly and shook my hand too while declaring his joy at having us at his restaurant in a thick, french accent. This gentleman turned out to be the owner and chef of Cafe Chou Chou, and over the next couple hours we could see how his personality affected everything around him, from the customers to the employees to the ambiance to create a fantastic dining experience.
As 7:45 became 8:00, and 8:00 became 8:15, our group of 12 were still outside waiting. I went inside to check on the table and inquire as to how much longer the wait would be. The owner looked almost mortified that he couldn't seat us yet as there was another table lingering after dinner, and with a look of uptmost resolve on his face grasped my shoulder and firmly reassured me that we were in his heart every second and he would not stop thinking about us. Then he looked up, and as if a brilliant inspiration had come to him, declared that he would tell all of us! Leading a bewildered me outside to where my friends were waiting, and after more fervent kisses and crushing hugs, he told us it wouldn't be much longer. Over the next 15 minutes, we saw various customers finish their dinners and depart from the restaurant, and I noticed that without fail, the owner thanked every single one of them, hugged/kissed every single one of them and every person left with a smile on their face. He came outside again, and brought every single one of us a glass of free blackberry champagne, and so we spent the next 5 minutes drinking outside, toasting this amazingly friendly, cheerful frenchman.
Even though our wait was almost 45 minutes after our reservations, the owner's charisma and service were so exemplary, the wait just didn't matter. This is one of the best dining experiences I've ever had, and we hadn't even gotten to the food yet.
Over the next couple hours, with warm, crusty, fresh-baked bread and half a bottle of red that the owner complimentarily changed into a full bottle of another wine he personally recommended, I ate New York kobe beef grilled to a perfect medium rare with a delicious glaze I sopped up with that crusty bread. I had full, huge steamed mussels that were loaded with an amazing, savory fragrance, and tender slices of duck with berries soaked in wine. Hands down; however, the best dish of the night was the warm goat cheese tart that practically sang to my palate. Everyone raved about it and simply could not get enough. The tart itself is like a caprese, but as apt as that description is it still doesn't do it justice.
We had a large party, and were one of the last customers to finally leave. As the night wound down and customer after satisfied customer groaningly walked out the door into the cold San Francisco evening, I saw the chef joke and chat with his employees, then grab all five of them and give them a tremendous embrace as they all laughed away. I can only imagine that he truly loves his job, his cafe, and all the people around him and he must be fantastic to work for.

The night finally ended for our group as well, and as all of us left there were more hugs to go around, more kisses for the ladies, more handshakes for the men. We all left the restaurant warmly satisfied, practically glowing with the knowledge that we just had an absolutely amazing experience that was simply worth every cent spent and more.

Anna

2009-03-06T09:21:00.000-08:00

I stumbled through the empty streets, the dark blue night sky a vast backdrop for numerous spots of angry orange-red flames. The distant fires painted a startling contrast against the calm melancholy of a silver moon that perched above me as I half-walked, half jogged closer and closer to the fires. I could feel the heat begin pounding in the night air, a strange combination of warmth mixed in with a cool evening breeze on an autumn night that made the skin on my face tingle and prickle. Every now and then, other people ran to and fro, helping hands that moved forgotten memories. The one thing that struck me was the absolute silence in the air, the quiet that had settled in around me so peacefully if I closed my eyes and forgot the increasing heat I could almost imagine myself in a different world altogether.

And that’s when I first saw her. She was quickly walking back the way I had come, a soft white quilted blanket draped around her from head to toe, wisps of long, black disheveled hair framing a strangely familiar face. Her house was not too far from mine, but closer to the encroaching flames. We walked together, simple and direct, and she learned that I loved to cook, though not for a living. I learned she loved to dance but had never gone swing dancing. She said that she had come from the East to start a new life for herself, and with soot smudging her right cheek, she looked up and smiled at me.

Her name is Anna.

Honor

2009-03-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's always somewhat surprising and a bit disconcerting to see how so much of one's temperance can change in a week. A week ago, I woke up in the morning and remember having the most delicious stretch. It must have lasted for a good couple minutes and included many varied yawns and exclamations of different sizes and shapes.

Last night I finished the 4th western I've read in the past couple weeks. Reading westerns always overwhelm me with a sense of lonely nostalgia. They're filled with tense and mounting danger, a culmination of injustices and vagrant evils that tests the hero's morality and integrity, and finally settles into a simple, determined, grim and lonely fight of Good and Evil. It's about vast strength of character against men "as poisonous as a rattlesnake," and the few and far friendships of kindred spirits that acknowledge each other in the bold, calm, steady gaze that tells of careful scrutiny and reserved judgement. Some part of me desperately desires to find such meaningfulness, to be lost somewhere and then discover the stark, simple depths of my own strength and heart in the face of insurmountable trials; to walk with courage and boldness of spirit. Westerns always have beautiful, wild, lonely areas where great men emerge out of the dust to appear with magnificent strength and determination, walking a broad path of justice and honor, and then disappear over the mountains into far horizons from which we can only imagine dwells Courage and Integrity, where men grown to become men, where "they cut them wide, and they cut them deep."

It's interesting to think that while westerns have a reputation for violence in gunfights and Indian battles, what I've found most common in westerns are always in-depth, introspective characters that carry a lonely, wild courage, and a deep, educated wisdom of self-perception, born of simple, undeniable truths of Life and Honor.

Rambling

2009-02-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

I have to admit I was a little apprehensive when I sat down last night underneath the crackling electric heater that bathed my aging, wicker chair in a soft yellow light. As I opened the soft, leather-bound, gold-enameled cover of Louis La’mour’s Silver Canyon lying before me, for the first time in my life instead of being overcome with excitement, I found myself feeling hesitant and wary. I had purchased this book months ago but had yet to read it and there was a time before when I would had given up sleeping, eating, school, to lie in bed underneath the warmth of my covers and dare to traverse sore backs and legs falling asleep just for the sake of finishing a book. And this particular one I had opened in front of me wasn’t just any book, any author. It was a story written by Louis La’mour, one of the reliable greats who wrote with authority and passion and a genuine thirst for adventure. He was an author that had succeeded in capturing my undivided attention for years and whose collection of novels littered my personal library. Furthermore, this was one of very few of his writings that I had never read. Under that yellow light though, the details only added to my discomfort and nervousness because I feared that if he couldn't capture my attention again, then what faint hope was there?

I was scared that I didn’t have that engrossing love for reading that I’ve had all my life. It may sound like something shallow and ridiculous to another, but reading was something that I’ve always identified with moreso than anything else in my life. I began reading in 1st grade, and steadily devoured my way through hundreds, and by now thousands of books over the years with my ability to finish hundreds of pages in hours, and my inability to put any book down. Yet…I didn’t remember the last time I’d felt that joyful lust overwhelm me; somewhere inside I feared that in the past year or so I had grown too much, grown too old and without realizing it lost a part of myself I valued above all else. And so I opened the soft-white pages and began very simply, to read. It was difficult at first, not the reading part but just trying to remember the words. I was overcome by my own thoughts and every few lines the idea would dash across my mind wondering if I was really enjoying this, if I was truly having a good time or just trying to prove to myself that I was. I know that when we are captiavated by something, truly heart-captured and lost we are unable to think, barely able to react and we are lost in the passion of whatever experience it is that has captured us, subject and slave to its whims. And obviously, I kept thinking, if I was able to think while I was reading I was not captured by this story, not captivated by its promise.

Then happened the greatest delight, the upmost wonder (to me). My mind, which is usually constantly thinking and turning around, endlessly questioning and backtracking and performing all sorts of incalculable philosophical surgeries on the “whys” and “hows” and “whats” of life and the minute spaces inbetween, was slowly beaten by that childhood thirst for adventure that had been lying dormant in me for so long that I feared it all but vanished! Unsuspecting to myself, which is a rare occurrence for me, I found that I had become lost in the pages of Silver Canyon and Mr. La’mour’s writing and did not realize it was happening. It’s like trying to catch that ironic juxtaposition of being fully awake to experience and understand the exact moment you fall asleep. I had been so wary of my fear of being unable to enjoy reading, that I worried I would always be prisoner of my own distrust of myself, too fearful of losing my passions, and too scared to control them. In doing one or the other I lose out on the most precious part, which is having the freedom to find irresistible joy and opportunity in reading. And last night I found it again, that delightful inability to stop reading, and I felt that rising joy overcome me once more.

It was absolutely wonderful. I sat there and felt myself luxuriously soak into the pages of the book, felt myself become lost in the wonder and courage of our hero, in the dangers and bedevilments of the story, and most of all in the subtle affluences of the author. One of my favorite things about writing isn’t always the story or the characters, but is the beautiful subtley with which an author asserts their own personality, their own likes and dislikes into the pages of something so personal to them. It’s like we have a window into another person’s soul if we dare to look. And if you are lucky enough to find those books that truly speak out to you, then you find that you and that writer are sharing something special for a while, some intimate secret that no one else can understand but the two of you, and it will be forever a part of your self-education. I finished that book last night, wasn’t able to put it down and my favorite part was simply being able to taste of the writer’s imagination, close my eyes and see not just what was written, but understand why it was written, to think about the passion that comes in writing stories of such lonely courage, such fierce pride. It is a beautiful thing.

Dinner a la Salmon

2009-02-02T10:32:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure I concasser-ed the usage of that term, but I couldn't get that phrase out of my mind. My apologies to the French language.

Dinner on the 30th

Salad with all sorts of jazz and Sesame dressing.

Israeli couscous simmered in chicken broth with shallots and cinnamon, mixed with sweet potatoes and pumpkin butter (Trader Joes!).

Salmon with wasabi-mayo and avocado.

Lemon pie with homemade whipped cream.

Light on

2009-01-27T01:03:00.000-08:00

Who has the courage to say the words that no one hears? To throw trusting heart into the cold wilderness . To stand alone and understand.

Touch

2009-01-21T10:46:00.000-08:00

I gazed into the studded black horizon, that sparkled and danced as if an unseen hand had in some fervent passion strewn millions of diamonds to scatter across the velvet night. In the near distance the steady crash and break of waves pounded with practiced determination, echoing an ageless rhythm for wondering ears. I stood underneath the glow of a soft street lamp that was almost lost in the embrace of quiet dusk and watched gray smoke swirl higher into the night sky, luxuriously unrolling its way across an ancient palate. There, with the cool evening breeze dancing her fingers lightly across my skin, the soft silence broken only by the muffled roar of distant waves, I saw the edge of rainfall. Small, glittering droplets broke free from the black night to fall upon my lips and face so shyly that I could count each single silver drop as they materialized before me. For a long while I stood there on weathered concrete, sage-green jazz drifting behind me, gazing high into that black horizon and counted the rain.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

2009-01-20T14:52:00.000-08:00

I sit back and reflect on the wide-world around me, this sometime hesitant, sometime eager juxtaposition of desires and fears, instinctive morals and deviant transgressions that I constantly find myself submerged in. One constant characteristic I have that has so greatly shaped the way I life my own version of Truth is this inevitable desire to break down our own perceived reality into smaller, purer Truths that are birthed from an amalgam of our own perceptions and misconceptions, victim to subtle, cultural and social influences masquerading as intoxicating, self-justifying Absolutes. I am fascinated with an insatiable desperation to deny the inconsequential struggles of humanity, ever-seeking some form of deeper truth with the mentality that once we are on the path to honesty, then exists the possibility of Understanding and some form of Glory. If there is anything in this world that captivates me, it is the ever-growing struggle to confidently classify this entire writhing mass of minuscule detailed Absolutes underneath a greater Theme that has the strength and honesty and flexibility to envelop the entire Truth of ourselves, past, present, and growing, all the while with a humble bow to the deep, magnificent mysteries that refuse to be understood by frail human ignorance. Once forged from so many distraught and lost links, this chaotic joust of mind and heart melds together into a simple, pure and honest understanding of our own selves. I want that understanding, I want to discover that lasting, deeply satisfying, humbling peace that comes with a wisdom and acceptance of our own unique strengths, weaknesses, and place in this world. In that acceptance we find an immortality of sorts, a glory, an everlasting freedom.

Stay Lost

2009-01-02T15:13:00.000-08:00

A thick gray sky stood still against rolling green hills, with a single, lonely sparse bush cutting a stark profile into the cascading silence of the morning. I stood there on cobbled streets surrounded by the cacophony of winter glamor that adorned the neat spanish tiled townhouses veined with dark green ivy and soft red roses, gazing into that distant horizon. I couldn't help but become overwhelmed with a desire to climb over that black, wrought-iron fence that so possessively divided civilization and wilderness, and sit there with that single bush standing with such lonely courage high above the throttle and hum of humanity. I wanted to cut my own profile into the blue-gray sky that sang so still, so silently and with that lonesome bush, wonder about the mysteries of simple things, lose myself in the reverence of childhood memories cloaked and half-forgotten. I walk so closely to the discovery of such wondrous secrets that there are times I wonder if I am choosing to live this life, or am too fearful to dare and discover another.

Buble

2008-12-10T23:31:00.000-08:00

What a relaxing evening tonight. I haven't had time to just soak in my introvertedness for a while now. I can't remember the last chance I had to just sit and read a good book, or slowly enjoy my coffee rather than desperately caffeinating myself.

I'm here all nice and warm from a fresh shower, smothered completely from head to toe in my thick, velvet-soft blanket and draped incredibly comfortably across my silk smooth wine-red sheets I unashamedly splurged on. My room is freshly (and a little obsessive compulsively) cleaned, and my laundry completely done. All my errands have been run and I stretch so luxuriously I feel like just melting into the seductive comfort of my blankets. I have a playlist on my laptop with a couple dozen Michael Buble songs drifting through my room that I haven't heard in a long time. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy his music. Buble makes me remember what it was like to enthusiastically fall head over heels in a wondering love. Sometimes I get too covered in the dusty details of everyday rituals and the cost of maintaining them. It's good to remember the important things, the things we took seriously when we were children, that somewhere along the way became faint memories fluttering in the corners of our hearts.

Sometime Noon

2008-12-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

It is a deep-seated warmth to know that in humanity seeds of compassion do thrive, too often tamed by the monotony of luxury and comfort, but will burst forth in adamant resilience when fate demands. I forget so easily in the endless hobbies of everyday life, but every few and far Life sparks to remind us of the simple truths.
They must feel good about themselves, and feel more honesty and joy today.
And she must feel thankful, and the morning has become brighter.

Has it been 4 years already

2008-12-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the weight is too heavy a burden but it just keeps coming, flowing, pouring into me a blue, blue torrent. I shake my head, fall to cold earth, covered from head to numb toes in the choking resentment of inequality, unfairness. I want to be free to be loved cheaply, I want to buy my kingdom of tarnished dreams and duct tape the entire mess beneath. To boast and be applauded by princes of mockery and ignorance. I want to drink of that shallow well of flash fame and fortune and desperately wallow in whatever mud is flung my way before it has become dry and cracked.

Integrity and honor are shadows that leave a bitter taste in my mouth and I crush that memory with practiced bravado. The cheap applause only spurs me forward. If you can't beat them, join them.

Yet rare moments of silence when the world has screamed itself hoarse carries with it memories like pinpricks, nagging and irritating. The temptation is never strong, never overpowering, but always a clean, pure constant throb. Expression is a necessity, but art is a choice. Some of us are lucky and fall into it faster than others do. I've forgotten how to see it, and in so doing let you down. We are the weight upon each other's shoulders, let us carry one another up. It is not inequality, it is not a burden, it is a responsibility we hold, a privilege we undertake to have such raw trust placed in our hands. That understanding carries with it a freedom as well, not so lightly touched, but also not so lightly lost.

Even if it's too late, there is honor in our passion.

Faithful, faithless, Christians

2008-12-02T16:09:00.000-08:00

Faith in things we have grown confident about is not faith. Having faith when peace has settled into our hearts about the decision is not faith. Faith is born in the beating moments, when indecision knifes into our hearts and we drown in insecurities. Faith is the courage to stand amid all the chaos and fear and ignorance and choose to believe in something greater. It does not exist, is not made stronger because we understand it, but triumphs because we don't. Faith is the eye of the storm, the calm certainty that is never devoid of emotion but surrounded by the raw power of it. It is not security and it is not peace; Faith is courage.

Thanksgiving Feast

2008-12-01T13:34:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving feast! 3 days of cooking. Trader Joes must love me.

Turkey stuffed with red onions and oranges

Cranberry-Apple Sausage Stuffing

Andouille Sausage Cornbread Stuffing

Scalloped Potatoes and Yams with fresh-grated Gruyere

Green Bean Casserole

Eggnog Tiramisu Trifle

Pumpkin Cheesecake with Gingersnap-Pecan Crust

Post-cooking, pre-food coma

Hope you guys all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Thrice

2008-11-30T19:01:00.000-08:00

Gray winds come and gray winds fall
haunting, swift and heady.

Gray winds come and gray winds go
'round my soul they eddy.

World undone

2008-11-19T14:45:00.001-08:00

The struggle is not to ferret out the perpetrator of whatever inconceivable deed that has transpired, but rather to come to terms with our own inability to comprehend, our own unwillingness to accept and our temptation to visit that alluring freedom the casting of blame brings to the satisfaction of perceived justice our naive minds cry for. It is far too easy to seek around ourselves, like some wild beast hungrily snarling for the next victim, to transform suspicion into guilt at the touch of the most fallible of possibilities and lay it upon the unfortunate shoulders of whichever poor soul venturing too closely to the vicinity of the hastily drawn assumptions we have created in our own perception. Then it is but simple steps to stop fighting our own naivety and instead concentrate our efforts upon discrediting, punishing, and hating the victim to our utmost satisfaction. The fact that we can derive such feelings of absolution and peace from the antagonizing of another human being in this world is every indication of the wide array of sentiments humanity is susceptible to, and an even stronger call to stand above the mob and grasp and understand grace and forgiveness and wisdom lest one day we find ourselves on the other end of the torch. To see such dark depths to which we so easily and eagerly sink cries out more fervently than ever our need for a God, and to see the triumphant strength of heart and compassion that breaks free to soar above such temptation gives evidence more than ever to the certainty that there is a God.

Cookin' Time

2008-11-12T09:06:00.000-08:00

Monday night dinner all impromptu-ish

Top Sirloin with caramelized onions and sun-dried tomatoes on toasted flax seed Ciabatta bread with roasted garlic-aioli Dijon mustard.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner

2008-11-07T16:32:00.000-08:00

Well, there's actually no chicken here, but for titles I usually put the first thought in my head.

Another cooking night...

First course - Sweet potato ravioli with sage butter cream sauce.

Side dish - Wasabi mashed potatoes with shallots fried in sesame oil

Main course - Peppercorn-crusted Seared Ahi Tuna with Avocada and Shiitake-ginger cream sauce.

Dessert - Molten chocolate cake with Vanilla or Espresso Ice Cream and Chocolate Fudge Sauce
(Unfortunately the heat from the cake started melting the ice cream, whipped cream as I was taking pictures)

Today

2008-11-04T23:50:00.000-08:00

Pray for the wisdom to differentiate between opinions born of fear and steeped in arrogance and between a heartfelt desire to live and breathe that vaunted Truth so tightly clasped in desperate moments of fading hope. To crown Humility with Grace's soft touch and all bow our heads before an Ancient Majesty that in countless lifetimes has never ceased to prove a Sovereignty far beyond the meager strength of our assured foolishness and frail certainty.

Let it be instead that in our wonderment, in our bewilderment, in our confusion, we will courageously void ourselves of anger and hate and the lure of imagined personal affronts so that in that release and freedom we shall find the salvation, the steadfast glory of a Proven Faith.

Prop 8

2008-11-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

For a long time I avoided writing this, telling myself that I was refusing to enter a debate I didn't know enough about, using my own lack of knowledge as an excuse for a cowardice in expressing my own opinion. And then I argued to myself, that it is not so much the possession of opinions that differs wise men and fools, but rather the temperance with which one views his/her own opinion: whether it be with an open heart that finds that fine line between being honest and steadfast with one's beliefs, yet respectful and loving of another's. It is all to easy to be caught up in the righteousness of our own arguments, in the temptation of being right that we forget to love, forget to withhold judgment on one another.

Unfortunately, and with perhaps a slight blow to my own ego, it is the bravery of others in standing forth from the mob around us that has lent me courage to at the very least put my own thoughts down in firm writing as a testament to stand behind. I do not particularly desire to write this, yet the unsaid and unwritten burns inside me, some sort of hot rage unrelentingly demanding release as I cower behind a myriad of excuses.

So here lies a small part of my mind coalesced with my heart, forming an opinion that in all my arrogance is only humbly, mine.

This past week, with the various conversations I have had with friends and acquaintances in regard to the issue of prop 8 has brought me a great disappointment in many and a humbled respect for too few. I have met proponents for either side, people who argue with great fervor and passion, who utilize logic like a sharp-edged weapon, ones who stand for the sanctity of marriage opposing those who demand equality and freedom. And I have never been so disappointed in seeing the foolishness of so many who eagerly and passionately devote themselves to a cause not with wisdom and love for our BROTHERS and SISTERS, but with an arrogant mob mentality that boasts of ignorance and hypocrisy. I see around me people who have become so lost in the BATTLE that they have forgotten the worth of the casualties. I speak about people on both sides of the issue, slandering and tearing one another apart with ones pervertedly using the word of God as a guise to further a hypocrisy of self-righteous cowardice, and others using the social idea of equality as a dagger to demand freedom without realizing the context and sacrifice that freedom carries.

I, myself believe in Christ, the depth and meaning of His love, and the sanctity of the marriage that He calls for. I believe that the blessing of marriage is something that God has intended to glorify and symbolize His own sacrifice and remains one of the greatest blessings He can possibly give to us. I also believe that we, as Christians today, have torn asunder that very holy idea of marriage. What exists today in our society is nothing like the marriage God intended for us. We eagerly argue that God never desired homosexuals to engage in marriage, yet we refuse to look at the other parts of God's description. We do not talk about adultery, or divorce, or abuse, which so many Christian men and women in Christian marriages are guilty of. If we are to point the finger and deny marriage to homosexuals, then in all fairness we must deny it to those who cheat and those who abuse as well.

The act of marriage itself is only an act, born from the philosophy and principles lying behind it, never the other way around. Instead of looking at the act of marriage that we desire so strongly to deny homosexuals, we must look at the foundation marriage rests upon. Marriage is intended to portray the goodness of God, symbolizing His sacrifice and love with a union both holy and good. As a group of people, we have not upheld that in the least, choosing our own freedom and desires before it. Once I heard a famous speaker at a Christian conference who gave an apt description that many found wise and heartfelt: the speaker said simply that the Shepherd is ever the one gently guiding, gently leading. It is the butcher who chases from the back and scatters the flock. We must look at ourselves and ask what we are truly doing: are we leading, or are we in fact trying to angrily chase away our brothers and sisters? Do not vote according the act of marriage that we see, but rather the principles marriage is founded upon, the principles God asks us to dedicate ourselves towards: love for one another, an understanding of His humbling grace, and a dedication to our own personal integrity.

I ask not to vote with arrogance and pride, but with faith that as long as you are following God's heart, not the actions but His heart itself, that His will will bring forth change greater than any we could ever accomplish or imagine. Sorrow that God must look down upon His children using His truth to tear one another apart, and rejoice that He is powerful enough to defy our understanding, powerful enough to happen miracles. Dare to look at the deeper matter, the heart and truth behind not only marriage but how God wishes us to treat one another as well, and then let Him do the work. After all, He is God.

In that cookin' mood

2008-10-30T01:18:00.000-07:00

Needed to mellow out one night. All with a bottle of Chianti.

Ribeye with black peppercorns and sea salt in garlic butter with Rosemary garlic-prosciutto mashed potatoes and roasted mushrooms and caramelized onions simmered with a Dijon-red wine glaze. Sounds fancier after I've written it out, but it's actually pretty easy to make! Props to roommate for the great photos.

Fate of the World!

2008-10-27T13:34:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the theme of this blog, I just really feel like I want to write this dream down while it's still vivid and alive in my head. Like most of my dreams, it hits me pretty heavily and leaves me either emotionally drained or emotionally amped when I wake up. Sometimes (like this one) I'm not quite sure which it is.

So welcome to the subconscious of Jonathan. =D

I'm sitting in an old, gray swivel chair like the ones you'd find in a barbershop from the 40's, my fingertips brushing repeatedly against the numerous rivulets of rough, ancient, cracked leather that webs across its arms. My eyes narrow slightly from the dull brightness of the afternoon sun that filters in through rusted windows and half-drawn blinds, my ears barely hearing the cacophony of sounds that play back and forth in the thriving heart of Chinatown. Here, in this room that smells like old, heady incense soaked into the aging mahogany that paves the floor and cabinets, with the click-clack of swaying beads echoing lightly, I try to make sense of the red and gold tattoo that spirals across my left arm.

I see a phoenix and a griffin, which in turn becomes just a griffin, resplendent in brilliant golds and reds and while being a notably European creature, seems for the purpose of this dream to be a myth born of ancient Chinese lore. There's an aura of mystery and power that surrounds the art, and as I look at its picture it seems to writhe and twist its form across the length of my forearm.

Then in what seems like mere seconds, some form of shadowed enemies burst into the room and I find myself running across rooftops and alleyways, my heart pounding in my ears, the knowledge that I needed more time a mysterious but very definite, undeniable reality.

So I end up cutting off my forearm and eating it to keep its secrets from the enemy.

Eventually, I somehow end up with two additional tattoos at what seems like a much later time. Two coy-fish, red and gold intertwine around my right leg while a huge dragon runs across the length of my back. At this point my arm had grown back (like Wolverine) but the original tattoo wasn't there anymore, and I knew that I needed to get it back as fast as I could or the world was doomed. It seemed as if the fate of the world hung in the balance.

So I travel the world now, trying to find the old man who originally gave me that tattoo and complete the triad of creatures that represent power, fortune, and immortality. Somehow, with these powers I would be able to save the world.

And then I wake up, and have to go to work.

Adventure

2008-10-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

5 mile hike to the Bridge to Nowhere

Azusa Mountains

Asians in mountains

The edge of the Bridge to Nowhere

BUNGEE!!!

Oh baby

The jumpers

Familiar fears

2008-10-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." - Ranier Maria Rilke

How many of us live in reaving fear, lashing out to quell the many storms around us before they, in their own terrors lash out against us? How many of us, hushed into pale denial by the staggering immensity of our own self-loathing, seek so fanatically, so fervently to rend apart from the shaded lives of strangers, that very horror that we know lies treacherously within ourselves? It is as if the level of ferociousness our hatred carries is rivaled only by the depths of our fear and the starkness of our understanding. Though the ignorant may respond in fear to the unknown, it is the wise, the ones living in undeniable familiarity that must struggle between the freedom of a far-leaping grace and the temptation of an alluring, dark hate. As creatures whose passions rise and fall so easily upon life's capricious whims, we fall all too often within the grasp of our own hated weaknesses found in another. And thus, we do not always attack to win, we do not always fight to triumph or to survive; there are times when our desperate struggles are for nothing more than the sake of shattering mirrors so that we will not be haunted by our own familiar, lingering truth. Perhaps we have all become dragons of a sort, eagerly hunting each other down in our own desperation to end a self-afflicted misery too blind to accept love with grace, and so unable to offer it in turn to another. And so we shall remain, preying upon others in a constant attempt to flee from ourselves, until we finally grasp the courage to withstand such familiar, well-worn fears and to love and pull one another out of drowning shadows with a powerful grace whose soft touch carries with it it's own strong, forgotten familiarity as well.

Indulgence

2008-10-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

Nostalgia

2008-10-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

I can't count the number of times I walk around a bookstore like Barnes or Borders and I'm literally tingling with anticipation. God, I absolutely love bookstores. The soft, over-stuffed leather chairs, my some-sort-of-iced-vanilla-latte, that entire parade of people, all different sizes and shapes and colors rummaging around in some form of intellectual/creative cliche. I can sit in the coffee-shop cafe and with absolutely no shame, bask in that smooth, rich, trendy coffee-atmosphere. I succumb eagerly and willfully to the mass marketing and the terrors of Starbucksology and feel completely, wonderfully at home.

Every time I walk into a bookstore it's like walking into a treasure trove. I suppose that makes me a nerd of some sort, but usually I'm enjoying myself far too greatly to care very much as to what kind of nerd that is. The only thought that vexes me to any degree is what book to read first.

Speaking of which...I was recommended to a novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, by a good friend a few months back. Since then I have in turn recommended this book to numerous other people, one of whom started reading it recently. Our conversations have whipped up some of that good ol' nostalgia and I'm recalling again just how much I was...entraptured by that book.
It wasn't just the poignant spin on romance, on love beyond love, beyond time, beyond strength and impossibilities, and it wasn't just the intricate details the author so painstakingly thought out that drew me in. What appealed to me the most, that wholeheartedly captured me and drowned me in its pages was the author's ability to weave absolutely beautiful, passionate moments that dotted the entire novel. I love how she writes with such honest, uncompromising, and at times a hauntingly sorrowful beauty that in the midst of all the Complications and Obstacles of life, presents a very simple, infinitly strong Love that pulses and throbs with all the desperate heartache of two people who will not and cannot let go of one another. She takes Love and dissects it down to its intricate core, and finds that when all the pieces are cut apart and laid down and minutely examined, there exists nothing but a simple, honest, undeniable love that is not great in its perfection, but great in its unrelenting passion.

It's a story about two people who desperately and fiercly love each other not because of the circumstances that bring them together, but inspite of the ones that try to keep them apart.

Great book.

Breaking Love

2008-09-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

Hint of Autumn, breathing breathing,
golden glazed and moonlit crisp,
Oak and Rowan, sorrow sorrow,
leafy heads in reverence.

Wind holds breath in breathless silence,
grass weeps dew, shimmer shimmer,
starry tears in the heavens sing,
haunting song softly glimmers.

Heaven weeping freely freely,
echoed in the hollowed sky,
voices sing now, rising rising
'pon the soft of angels fly.

Melody of anguish blackened.
on wondering world cries cries.
nature's heartbeat thrumming steady,
hear wind-touched valleys sigh sigh.

Bathed in evening song will honor,
sorrow of a Kingly heart,
wind will breathe into wondering eyes,
hints of Autumn, worlds apart.

Creation Afternoon

2008-09-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

I like how this blog has the options "moderate comments, edit posts, and Create" instead of "new post."

I sit here in this fog-gray cubicle, leaning back in this wire mesh of a chair that's supposed to be "scientifically proven" to improve my posture, staring at the myriad of objects cluttering my desk. I think, is this a testament to the ingenuity of man or a reflection of our constant desire for mindless ease? For the luxury of doing nothing. Whatever happened to that satisfaction that comes from completing a goal? When did it become too hard to try? I imagine however many years ago invention started as a passion, a desire to create works that reflected mankind's intelligence and creativity. Somewhere along the way as we became increasingly more involved in "improving" our lifestyles and testing our limits we lost that passion. It became a small sacrifice for the greater good of course, a vague memory that is out of date, that is redundant. It was a passion that brought to fruition all that we have and a passion easily, even eagerly, sacrificed in the mass marketing of our lives and our souls. Because you see, the thing about passion is it takes time and effort and after a while time and effort just aren't efficient enough anymore.

We have worked so hard to create our own redundancy and forgotten that joy of creation in the first place. I wonder if people who create for joy and satisfaction ever realize that one day, the joy and satisfaction are gone and all we are left with is the end product, without any heart and any soul. I guess most people won't see it; as long as something satisfies our immediate senses we rarely feel the need to indulge in the deeper wants of our hearts, the ones that are hidden enough to be too dark to see clearly and have roots driven deep within our Selves.

"When is passion more evident than when the yearning heart is freed from the logical mind? "

I feel that within every single one of us, there is a need to express ourselves...a desire to create and a yearning to be remembered. And if we do not embrace that desire whole heartedly and give way to that red passion deep within, we will forever be living a lie and denying the truth of us that was born the second we were. I don't think this "passion" is easy to find; the journey is long and taxing and breaking and requires dedication to honesty. To tear away the influences of society, of culture, of people and media to finally come to the pure emptiness that doesn't make sense...that is simply...you.
If we ever touch that Heart in us, I feel we will live a much more satisfying, fullfilling life. One that finds pleasure in creating, not simply in working. Though we strive so desperately to perfect efficiency, the truth is that efficiency is never as prominent as in the absence of humanity.

"We are all imposters playing at living until we dare to step out of our roles."

"When the sun rises, I go to work.
When the sun goes down, I take my rest.
I dig the well from which I drink.
I farm the soil which yields my food.
I share creation.
Kings can do no more."

Old Courage

2008-09-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

I wonder if I'll find the courage to bind myself to the unknown in life and look upon it with an eager heart. I wonder what links I'll forge today.

A jazzy, lonesome night tasting like smoky moonlight dancing on the tip of my tongue. That moment between tomorrow and yesterday when all my worries have faded into quiet, gray shadows and each second drifts slowly apart in front of my eyes. My breath beats with a steady, calm certainty against the cool night air and all those every-questions of everyday and everything falls from my shoulders like brown-gold leaves off an autumn tree. It's the boom-boom baby of soft blues in your eyes and poetry in your fingertips when God isn't what I should do or who I'm afraid to be or where I'm going next, but instead He's that rhythm in the soles of my feet, the music that carries me away when my eyes shut and that deep deep satisfaction drifting, drifting like soft, smoky moonlight. It's a night when all my constraints are flung away and I can dare to be free and dare to be alive and dare to stand and breathe in old dreams and faded memories. Dare to remember childhood loves and that magic of circumstance and coincidence. Tonight, I remember.

Autumn Morning

2008-09-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

Words mean so little sometimes, they only explore the shallows of our hearts, dutifully express the barest corner of our minds, and truly capture a faint echo of our souls. They desire to say so much, eager to outwardly create the passionate intensity of an achingly beautiful symphony of joy, anger, love, hate, envy, sorrow, laughter. Tears stream down your face and your hands are locked so hard sorrow runs rivers down your body, time stops still and the world spins around so gracefully you're captivated by joy hushed into awe. To create a picture of that so simple, so complex whirlwind of emotions locked within us we ransom desperation, gather hope. We want to shout from the top of a mountain until our throats are hoarse and as we struggle to thrust away the constraints of a language, an expression we have limited ourselves to, we find we are only able to whisper.

I woke this morning from a golden slumber
as rev'rence held still the early air
and emerald leaves bronzed in countless number
while whisper winds played upon my hair.

I tasted passion in a red burnished dawn,
a sky dimmed with beckoning freedom
and turning, lay my heart in a simple bond
at the dainty feet of a graceful Autumn.

My fingers ran through her long bronzed tresses
spilled 'cross my chest in silken folds.
My silence fallen to her breath's caresses
beneath those soft-spun leaves of gold.

And I laid her down gently in valleys deep
the veiled depths of a golden kingdom
watched over her who watched over me
lost in the quiet of a graceful Autumn.