current office - sj 2021

june set-up

finalized set-up (probably)

milpitas house - october 2020

my first office 

miss ya 

lively inside of a new conversation

I caught myself thinking, 'It's been a while...'  

It felt dreary sitting in my head - mildly weighted, but a dull, shallow thought nonetheless. 

This can only mean it's a Sunday.

I'm sitting in my living room. I rolled my bar cart to a corner, placed my laptop a top, and added a bar stool to officially appoint it my new office. I'm reheating leftover spaghetti that Anna's mom made, and of course, my coffee has turned cold from sitting out. I don't even like coffee. It feels like I never have. I may have been drinking it out of obligation to pay attention to my day, but I can't remember most details of anything now. It's a pointless habit, and it all tastes like shit to me. I must find the silliness of it cute or something.

After eating dinner the other night, I said aloud that I wanted 8 more hours in the day so I can bull shit like I used to. Then at 50 y/o, the hours will begin to lessen to coincide with the moment of my death. The slower I get, the less time I need to spend anticipating. I'm just so tired all the time, and I miss hanging with moments. I may be spending the majority of my spare time unwinding from working all day. My brain and bones. My brain and my fucking bones... 

I've only been listening to King Princess. Back at it again with the gay bullshit. It reminds me of when I first Anna. And what that yearning felt like. That incredible pain that somehow lit my ass on fire and demanded me to get my life. It also reminded me of when I first started listening to Tegan and Sara. And what that teenage, gay yearning felt like. First understanding that I was queer and how music was helping me make sense of it.

My adoration for the memories of these...pains. I adore the recalling of it. And I know I'd been miserable through it. But without the miseries, I wouldn't find so much beauty in life all of a sudden. And though it may often bring me sullen, nonsensical bull shit, I still will never help but love this shit.

I feel choppy - fitting since I haven't spoken in so long. Fitting since ...after all these years, there's a comfort being right here. When my thoughts  were purely to express  precisely how I wish. Not that my thoughts are now spoken for... but my thoughts I intend to share outside of this. This was my solitude. This has been with me for so long. I was just writing the other day about the different journals I've  gone through since I was in the 4th grade. And I was wondering why there's  a huge chunk of the happiest  moments of my youth that I wasn't carrying a journal. And I remembered that I was here, replacing my forlorn entries with photos of my friends and the gorgeous little madness we all shared.

Now I'm missing from here, but I'm elsewhere and altogether whole. And I was  wondering why and how I feel so whole. Because I never see my friends as often. And I never get to wander through this life as often. But I never  feel as lonely as how I used to. I never feel like I'm missing out on anything anymore. I never feel like I have to be at a multiple places at once because of a heavy fomo. I can stay out here and be whole.

Is this it?

Finally. 

Disengaged

I stop by and I peer in, but I never say anything. I haven't in a while, and I haven't tried for even longer. I've made it clear to myself that this space isn't for the voice I have now. But there are certain things I hold on to. Certain things I can't completely look away from. It might always be that way. But I'm giving myself credit for acknowledging. 

It's a quiet Sunday. Almost all my Sundays are quiet. Anna leaves for the day to go to church and spend time with her family. I stay home and hang out with the boys; Rover, Arlo, and sometimes Sarah. I stay in bed a lot. I watch movies that I've missed. I read articles I've been holding off. This Sunday has been no different. I've lined up my to-do list in my head, and the first thing on that list is put off getting started on my to-do list. My laundry is waiting. A shower is waiting. I've only gone downstairs to grab an awful lunch. I'm playin' games with a box of Ferrero Rocher that I coulda sworn I brought up here to use as stand for...I can't recall. I've had 3. I've had 3 more. Half the box is gone. I coulda sworn I don't like chocolate. But half the box is gone. 

My brother has been sleeping on my couch for several weeks now. He's slappin' his music through the new sound system that Xavier and I agreed to go splitsies on. I never paid my half. Splitsies just means he got it this time with the senseless purchases and I'll get the next. Splitsies is a functional system that contributes solely on the whims of our extravagant and self-indulgent consumption (which is most of them). I think Blithe might have a good taste in music. But I can't tell because I don't listen to music. Anymore. In fact, I've been trying to play something from my iPod just so I could be listening to something...but it's several feet too far away for me to care and the old iPod on my side table drawer is dead and ancient. The only sounds in my bedroom are the ticks of a clock I stole from work, a cawing out my window, and my brother's potentially good music taste permeating through the cracks of my door. 

It's a quiet Sunday. 

every time i leave my parents house, i look out my windows and see my dogs sitting at the front door, wagging their tails at the sight of me. 

i still cry driving away. 

my heart is so tender

and i'd say that this was an embarrassing admission

but it's not, and i miss them all the time. 

can't explain it. and i'm not sure how to express it or how to relate to someone else about it. maybe if my sister moved out too she'd get it. 

but for now, i quietly think of them as i continue to go on with my days. 

and maybe a tear or two will escape while i work through the mundane. 

can't imagine how i'd cope as a parent. 

i said i wouldn't disappear. i've talked about how of all the types of people, i wouldn't be like them and disappear. 

but i think that maybe

it's ok to disappear.

i have shit to do. 

c ya

Lover...

Maybe she's eclipsing everything else.


How is it that everything else feels ordinary?

Plain.

Forgettable.


I can't find a song more beautiful

a film more beautiful

a dream more beautiful.

Not a view more beautiful

or words more beautiful.


If I should be in fear

or in panic

should it set in soon?


If this will ever carve me out entirely


If this will ever...

On Wanting Something You Don't Have

Jealous.

After empathy came a wave of envy. A wave smattered with a faint recall of something festive. Something we all once knew before. Lime green. There goes the center seat in the back. No seat belt. I don't think about it often. But when I do, you should see me trying to blink back into clarity. 

After the wave of envy, I just wanted to scream it out. It seems so selfish. Surpassing selfishness even, and teetering a tip-toe to childishness. 

The apparition became a shadow. The apparition danced, but the shadow conversed into itself. For itself. A shattering transformation. Like a manifesting transcendance of something I'd always thought I'd have to use...but has never actually been mine. 

Denial trailed just footsteps behind me. 

Enter...

The Trial.

12 20 2012

"If Death--who was out there all the time, possibly sitting on the hood--if Death stepped miraculously through a glass and came in after you, in all probability you just got up and went along with him, ferociously but quietly."

sell out train

I haven't felt insightful in years. It's like every thought I have slips away so elusively that I can't recall moments at all. 

I'm sitting at my desk with a coffee much too cold to sip right but still much too warm to pretend iced. I'm difficult so I can't just say that the damn thing is lukewarm. See what I mean? The thought process that I am meant to have to even compose that sentence is so far away from me that I wouldn't know it was far from me. I wouldn't even know that the thought process existed because I don't stop to think about things like that anymore. Enter my bone to pick. Enter working for The Man. Enter the corporate sell outs. 

Here I am, coordinating conferences and events and the catering and the room configuration and making sure that the temperatures of every room will not be something anyone complains to me about. Because if I get another floaty attorney asking me to provide a goddamn blanket for their frigid office, I will fucking... eh. Maybe laugh pathetically to myself. It's the numbness of the corporate air. I always thought I'd hate it, but I am so indifferent and checked out. Enter the drone. 

"You'll get a story out of this one day. You'll write about your youth one day. You'll write about your friends one day. And your stupid shit one day. And you'll write about how it all brought you to Anna. One day." I am not at the point where I am telling myself to stop waiting for One day to come. I am at the point where I am waiting to tell myself to stop waiting for One day to come. 

...

25 arrived and I didn't sit on my bench all day, smoking cigarettes or reading books or scribbling on my little notebooks.

Last year was the first time I spent my birthday on my bench with company. And I remember noting how it was a beautiful day. How I loved my birthdays alone on my bench, but I loved it more with fluttery light eyes, squinting at me through long blondes. We hardly even sat on my bench. We sat on the grass across each other. I chased spiders while we played charades. I was falling so madly in love. There was a certainty and clarity there. I had never felt that way before. That I was simultaneously falling in love with someone and with life. Not just life, but living. Doing things. Being things. Wanting and dreaming and imagining something beyond my nows. I love my nows, but it was refreshing wanting more.

Enter delicious dreaminess. 

25 arrived and I didn't sit on my bench all day. Anna surprised me with a trip. She took me to Mammoth Lakes. Just like every trip we have ever taken, it rained that weekend. Stormed that weekend, in fact. She drove and we listened to an audiobook about some girl on some train. She took us to the mountains. Winding roads were steep and incredibly narrow as we trudged up and up. High beams on loud. No reception. She was getting sleepy, so I took the wheel. I refused to have her sleep on me so... enter the temptress. There isn't anything more distracting from sleep than the tug and pull. The temptress laid back on the headrest, tilted at me. Eyes dark. This look cannot be mistaken for anything other than what it is. She began to talk, and whenever she talked like that, it sounded like purring to me. The siren; my only siren smiled. It was dark and snowing, we parked by a cliff overlooking something of a view. The temptress, the purring cat, my only siren... "Happy birthday," she whispered to me.  Kissing anywhere she hasn't. My throat felt raw, and my voice was hoarse as I smiled through a thank you.

Best birthday I have ever, ever had. 

...

Maybe I should be more concerned about being a sell out. My youth warned me not to sell out. But really, I'm just more concerned about how the lighting will be when she's walking down the aisle. Or what song will be playing. What her expression will be the moment she sees me standing there. What color our bedsheets will be. How often we'll eat Chinese during the weekday. What her nightmares will sound like. If we'll ever argue about the dogs. Or money. Or the dishes. How it'll feel walking into our home after being away on vacation. As long as I can give us a great life, I can't really be bothered with whatever used to bother me. 

lights out

The last time Ace was home, we went out to the drive-ins and I passed out after 3 shots of tequila. I pass out everywhere all the time now. 

9-5's are no joke. I haven't had a gratefulness for Friday since I was in high school. Thank fucking fuck it's Friday. 

Not in a thousand years would I have imagined myself working for a corporate law firm. Didn't I insist on bartending just 6 months ago? Marriott was a joke. I got so bored that I drank myself out of there. Now I can barely drink. 

It's 25 this year. 

It's 25 in less than a month. 

My days consist of sitting in traffic for a total of 3 hours a day. Then sitting in front of a computer and internalizing the dreadful stresses of reception for a total of 8 hours. Coming home to 7 wiggly pups and their piss and their shit and their stinkinly beautiful faces. Having dinner with Abb and having fights with Abb and spending money with Abb and making love to Abb. By 10pm, my eyes are fighting to stay open. By 10:30, lights are out. Repeat. 

I'd say that this is tedious and stiff. But I don't have so much of a complain. The structure feels nice for once. I'd always thought that I'd hate doing this. Working for the man. Doing 9-5, TGIF. But I have my weekends back. And I can afford giving myself, my girlfriend, and my dogs a life. And even if the drudgery of mundane weekdays kind of poke at me sometimes, life feels better now than it has in the last decade. Or even  the last 2 decades and then some. 

25 so soon. 

I heard that 25 is when you're supposed to be at your most beautiful. I don't know who said that shit, but I hear it all the time. I can't say whether I agree or not. Because I'm stuffed with 15 pounds of happyfat and my ass out here for the world to finally see. All I know is that I find myself saying that I have reached a point in my life where I am confident to a fault. In all honesty, in comparison to how I used to polish myself before, I kind of look like shit now. I care less and less about the little details of my appearance and more about my exact state of mind. My self-esteem has risen taller than I thought I could reach. And maybe that's what it means to be at your most beautiful. Because at this very moment, I feel untouchable. I'm my own goddamn hypeman and I'm my own goddamn heaven. 

Abb

and the pups

and the perks 

and the pisses of life have all found an equilibrium. 

I used to tell people to watch ya girl shine cause i'ma shine one day. 

Bruh. 

k i t the goat

little lights of my life

I've been busy

jfcjfk

I absolutely abhor being around some fuckfaces that I went to high school with or had known during that time of my life. I don't know what it is about them, but they make me wanna black out into a black hole and never return. I can't even stand being connected through social media. I almost can't believe I used to fuck with that many people. I don't know. They're not bad people. They just compel me to be as foolish as possible. Anything to stir them. Anything to stir their frigidity.

Shout out to myself for being the smug asshole that I'd come to embrace.

stringing or dreaming

i wept.

i clicked and laid still on my couch. i remember thinking that i'd stick to the cushions if i don't move any sooner. i didn't move any sooner. i thought about baseball gloves and sitting in the backseat. sitting right at the center. sitting bitch seat. bush seat. it was my seat. 

"and i never feel somewhere, don't you know?" 

i think i was in between realizing that i have a constant fight with this addiction to sadness versus reminiscing about something sad. i can't tell which found a grip onto me. 

goosebumps on fleshy, unshaven legs. maybe my arms too but i felt it more on my legs and the back of my neck. or moreso the back of my throat. like i was rolling. i figured, damn this is good. i figured less when it took me elsewhere, idly. 

it dropped. 

or moreso trickled.

i could get trapped here, i thought. 

goosebumpy flesh of unshaven legs sticking on the cushions due to failure of moving any sooner. it kept dropping. silently. caught like a lurch in my pipes. there might've been somebody else in the living room with me. or i might've been alone. but i was hiding it. like my thoughts sucking microphones, and i didn't want them to know it made me sad. 

if i get trapped here, i thought, i won't be able to look at her right. we had plans to sit under our tree and take naps, like we had been all summer. but there i was, goosefleshed and sinking into the sads. PHYSICALLY...i had to physically eject myself from the silence of listening to the end of it. PHYSICALLY remove myself from the memories that will remain mine with, however, a sadness that was not mine. i was just in between fighting my addiction to the sads. fuck, DO I love the sads. but i can't choose the sads over anna. i can choose anna and i'll choose anna every time. every single time, twice over. 

i clicked off and shifted around the couch pillows and cushion seat. i watched squirrel trap. i had a laugh. i thought about anna. i thought about how she'll be outside picking me up in half an hour. i thought about how i'll tell her about the sads. how i wept because of this part of the song. and another part of the song. and how the lyrics say "i never had enough...to keep you stringing along" but it sounds like he's saying "...dreaming along" instead. i pet my dogs. i checked the time. 

i moved soon enough. put on worn socks. put on pants. packed my backpack. she called and was outside. i sat beside her in her hot car. shotgun. shotty no swoops. NO SWOOPS infinity. it was my seat in Big Red. i kissed her. she drove. she parked. we laid out our blankets under our tree on top of our hill. we talked and kissed and wished we didn't forget the pillows. i told her about the weeping. about the sadness. about the lyrics. she looked at me with the exact look i knew she'd give me. she kissed me and we listened to the song again together. she picked out the words that she thought would have a grip onto me. she picked the right words. 

nothing dropped.

nothing trickled. 

i didn't get trapped anywhere. 

the goosebumps came back when the cold gusts of dusk rolled in. we had Big Red the Blanket. she told me all the things she loved about me. she said my heart was big. 

i chose anna. 

i'll choose anna every time. 

every single time,

twice over. 

halves

I didn't realize I'd been writing my wedding vow ever since.

On the dashboard

Bruised.

I can be a really shitty person sometimes. I don't mean to suck you dry.

I don't mean to suck you dry.

I'd be in a damn ditch if your hand didn't constantly fish for mine while they're balled in tight fists.

yung boy