today I took the time to look.

I came to this lovely, quiet place to take pictures, but instead I ended up sitting on a bench, just... looking.

It's a cozy little park named Homestead, and somehow in all my six years of living here I did not give it a second glance. I've always busied myself with trips to the store, trips to the gym. But never to this small corner of nature. I'm writing this as I sit on a bench shadowed by pines and madronas, enveloped in its own green security. I sip my mango tea, thinking, wishing, that more people would take the time to appreciate the overlooked things around them. The truth is, we get so caught up with this perpetual cycle of manufactured productivity, that we forget to notice another cycle we are apart of -- life. And I suppose this is not an earth-shattering revelation by any means, but more of a way to convince myself that I still see.

It's a Wednesday, middle of the week, and the park is unsurprisingly empty. There's not a soul here save for me and my mango tea, losing its coldness in my hand.

The juxtaposition of two living entities is fascinating. On the other side of my tree enclosure, the 'normal' world spins on, car after car after car until the distinct sound of tires on cement becomes nothing more than a surreal hum. The stores and the gym are still there, but at this moment they don't exist. All I know is that the world on the other side of the madronas is foreign to me at this very moment, unimaginable, at least until my watch strikes two o'clock and I have to re-emerge -- fresh, clueless, back into manufactured productivity.

Some famous writer once said that to write effectively, one must concretely describe one's surroundings, 'teleporting' the reader. That is true enough, unarguably, but what I hope to do is not teleport, but reawaken. I hope to enlighten not of surroundings but of perceptions, feelings. 'Surroundings' are simply nouns, concrete, referential diction. They exist, they appear, they stare back at us with the same unseeing gaze we give them. We can touch, but can we feel? How we perceive these nouns is what matters -- 'beauty' would not exist if it were only a simple noun.

And so as I drink in my own perceptions of nouns with long sips of tea, with a spot of sunlight warm on my back and the hum of the world resonating in my ears, I know that nothing matters except our own relative cocoons made of pines and madronas.



As I left my bench, a man smiled at me, quietly raising his hand in a shy hello. He held a red cup in the other hand, fingers wrapped protectively around it. I was about to go on my way, camera around my neck, when he asked shyly, "Would you have 50 cents?"
I answered automatically, trained in the ways of homeless people, "No... sorry." I offered an apologetic smile and went back to taking pictures, forcing the homeless man out of my mind.

From the corner of my eye I noticed that, of all the benches in the park, he had chosen mine to lie on, his battered cap covering his face and his hands peacefully folded, as if in prayer. The irony struck me, hard. And on a whim I reached into my purse and pulled out my last $5, examining it closely. It was the new kind.

What would I buy with this? A cup of Starbucks, most likely. What would he buy with it? My mind said drugs and alcohol, but my heart said food. Somehow I couldn't see the man on the bench, with his folded hands and red cup, do what the 'adults' in my life told me homeless people do. I couldn't see it in his sorrowful eyes or in the way his cup appeared light, empty.

And on a whim I walked quietly up to this man, careful of not disturbing his sleep. I wanted to put the $5 in his hand and walk away softly, but he sat up as I approached and I handed him the bill, almost hastily. He regarded me with disbelief, his brown, knowing eyes almost crying with surprise.

"Thank you... I'm really hungry... God bless you, God bless you..." He kept stammering. All I could reply with, caught off guard by my own spontaneity, was:
"I don't believe in God."

His awkwardness vanished, and he sat up fully, eyes on me, intent, thinking.
"Why is that?"

"Because if God existed, you would not be lying on this bench with that red cup in your hands." I said it without thinking; the words just came.

"If God didn't exist, you'd be on this bench too."

"But why you instead of me?"

"But why any of us?"
He smiled.

I didn't want to; I didn't want to believe him. But I did, because he did. I was here because he was here. We were both here. Here, here, here.

I nodded and he knew.

The juxtaposition of living entities is a funny thing. A secluded park within the hum of the city, a homeless man believing in God and an affluent suburban girl refusing belief.

It's all here. Here, here, here.

conversations in maddening obscurity.

illusions, illusions
illusions.

For the nth iteration, intelligence failed to acknowledge the uncanny accuracy of his grandfather
the sage
intuition.

under the moonlit cedar grove
hands poised
his brier pipe full

"Logic has no empathy,"
he muttered.

the aether overwhelmed his conscience
somehow we seem to understand yet underestimate the inevitable,
comprehending infinite sums of indivisible units of time.

He laughed

"..the possibilities were neglected prior to their inception
his subconscious no longer speaks
for his muse left him
rendering the cosmos obsolete
only turbulence remains
encompassing existence with exponential growth and decay rates
a dream he cannot escape
sun and moon are equal spheres, sisters
in his eyes"

Standing upon the ever-increasing mound of evidence
the individual became the conclusion
in spite of His mechanism
rage consumed him
"Now is never!"
"Tomorrow is none!"
conviction bleeding from his skin
lungs thick with pneumonia.

five times he beat upon god's drum
five times was his soul struck
imprisoned, in prison
tearing essence from flesh, the disciple discovered his marking
the symbol of the universe -
empty.

Modeling the Dream

So, so chic. I’m living the dream right now, aren’t I? Who wouldn’t want exposure to the highest of the high, to the most important of the most important? The movers and shakers of the world and the deciders of the way we see each other, these people determine what is acceptable. All of these people will be watching me put every effort onto the stage, watching me face that fog of blinding lights as I move closer and closer to their eyes judging my every move. Half a year’s worth of stress will compress to a mere 10 seconds of fame and glory – and a number. This number will represent my so-called talent, effort, and drive, and that is all it will be: 10 seconds and a number.

I’m living the dream of every aspiring beauty queen right now. I’m waiting to be judged. I’m waiting for the rest of my high school days to be determined by a single number. This is the dream, isn’t it?

It is not for the fame or glory. It is not for the popularity or even the respect. I’m “living the dream” purely for myself, to seek outside confirmation of my internal doubts. That stage beneath the heels of my $200 designer shoes will prove that I can do it: I can not only be beautiful, I can feel beautiful – that I can feel beautiful coursing through every vessel in my imperfect body, to feel beautiful pounding in my ears, to see beautiful obstructing my vision, to know beautiful is clinging to the grace of every last one of my footsteps. The truth is, I need that number and that superficial safety. I crave the superficial. I’m exhausted from analyzing, from trying, from thinking. I yearn to just be, and be beautiful– know it. How easy would it be to be loved solely for my hair, my eyes, my body, my lips, my legs, myfeetmyarmsmytoes. Personality and intelligence play little to no role in this industry and I think I have found my safety net. It’s an empty existence but an entirely satisfying one, to know all I need in life is to walk down that runway, pose for that photo, tilt my chin up and hold my head high for those admiring masses. This is the dream, isn’t it?

I brush aside my nagging Physics homework with a decisive flick of the wrist; the only physics I need is the gravity-defying height of my fashionable hairstyle and the natural force of the catwalk pushing back up on me, keeping me standing in all my imagined (but nonetheless confirmed!) beauty. This was what I have wanted all along, wasn’t it?

My worst fears are failure and unhappiness. The runway promises to take those fears away, to brush them aside carelessly with its solid, secure foundation, to artfully and gracefully extend itself to the edges of time, to infinity, to ensure I’ll be placing one sure heeled foot in front of the other for as long as superficiality sneers its luring smile. My clothes won’t crease, the colors won’t fade, and I’ll remain cocooned in my fashionable refuge, free from all care and worry of failing.

Nothing can fail when it is beautiful.

Collections

"Can I sit here?" he asks. The table is empty except for me and my book; I came to the Seattle waterfront entirely on accident, on a whim, as an inconvenient deviation from my set plans.
I'm here, why not?
I find a table overlooking the setting sun and Seattle sublimity. This is what the city is. This is its most intimate secret, known by millions, the cloud of red, blue, and yellow draping the Olympic mountains and obscuring anything within range. It's all I can see. The sun and its Pacific refractions on the tranquil faces of anyone who approaches the guardrail -- and thank God it's there. I'd have been pulled and brought deeper into its passionate solar kiss. I'd never have been kissed like that before.

"Can I sit here?" I pull away from the reflections on the water and the smooth gold gradients on the sides of buildings to look up.
"Sure."
He's a frail boy of around 20, speech thick with a foreign accent -- English.
"Where are you from?" I ask him, precariously [my mother had told me not to talk to strangers but the atmosphere of intriguing unfamiliarity is too much].
"England," he tells me, "Just arrived the other day." He says it simply; much like England wasn't across the ocean, but merely a street away.
"Oh yeah? What brings you to Seattle?" I make small talk, like I'm accustomed to from years of superficiality and surface suburbanism.
He smiles and chuckles to himself, a knowing, peaceful curve on his face, also veiled in violent red-orange.
He pauses and looks away.
"Well... this." -- A nod towards the waterfront.

And I understood; it was what had brought me here too, whether I knew it or not.
I smile too and we watch the mountaintops turn darker and the sun fall lower. We discuss music, as any small conversation starts and continues.
The Shins.
The Shook Ones.
The Blue Scholars and Gym Class Heroes -- Papercut Chronicles -- the gritty, raw beauty of underground independence from radio.
"It's the lyrics that make it," I say, and he nods emphatically, knowingly.
"For me too."

Every so often we would pause and watch the diminishment of the sun. We wouldn't say anything for a few moments, not for loss of words, but an onslaught of possibilities and adjectives that could label the moment at the table, punctuated with overstuffed bags and a burdensome understanding that it is passing too quickly.

We exchange names and shake hands. He -- Danny -- jumps onto the table and spreads his arms, stretches. The red bounces off his untidy hair, mirror-like and momentous -- if Seattle were reflected in a human being, Danny's outstretched figure and easy disposition would be the elusive white light.

He takes a picture with a camera materialized from a small pocket.
"Do you ever feel like the sun sets faster the closer it gets to the horizon? Like the Earth spins faster the more beautiful it becomes."

I nod. I know what he means.
"I don't think it spins faster. I think it's a trick of the mind; beauty is fleeting and beautiful things slip by faster. They're... elusive. The more you want to keep the moment in your eyes, your palm, your memory, the faster it passes through your eyelashes, your fingers, your neurons."

I pause for a minute and still open my eyes wider and clench my hands tighter. But it doesn't matter; Danny sighs and admits, "To try... it's all you can do to see as much beauty as you can."

He sits back down.
"How old are you, anyway?" he asks curiously.
"Nineteen in a few weeks."
He chuckles. "Hah... lucky."
"Lucky? Why? How old are you?"
"This'll be a fun game to play. How old do you think I am?"
I look at him, cock my head to the side.
"Twenty-one?"
"Nope."
"Younger? Older?"
"Older." He appears amused.
"Twenty... three?"
"Yes." The amusement turns to melancholy and for a quick moment I wonder why.
"And if I shave, I look like I'm fourteen." He grins and we laugh at the silliness of the notion; the moment is bittersweet and laughter is a welcome concept.
"So what do you want to do with your life?" I ask this broad question simply, quite childlike and naive, but he answers, "Something good," smiles, and looks at the sun, almost gone.
"That's our responsibility. I hope to leave the world a better place than I found it."

We talk about hopeful notions and idealistic fantasies; he takes off the woven hat he was wearing and ruffles his bright pink hair carelessly.

And I wonder, I question, how funny is it that an unfortunate distraction led to this unique stranger. It's funny how things work. Just that. Humorous.

The Earth spun faster and beauty grew in hues of red and the sun settled behind the mountains.

"I'm headed to Portland next, and San Francisco after that... I collect sunsets." Danny tells me, and I think, I believe it.

"Where are you headed next?" I ask, and he answers, "A little town called Lakewood, by Tacoma." He tells me of strangers' kindness in letting him sleep on their couches and we laugh at the sublime coincidence of locations and hometowns.

Eventually the sun lets go of its vibrancy and subdued grey creeps onto the horizon lethargically, and as all beautiful things, the moment and the conversation is over -- Danny has to catch a bus to Tacoma. He hugs me like an old friend and rationalizes, "Since I'll probably never see you again..."
"Don't say that. I travel a lot..."
The air thickens and we both know the acquaintance, the conversation, the universal truths and the ruffled pink hair are only refracted, analogous red rays.

As any beautiful thing, it leaves you.

It hides behind the mountain ridges and clings to surface clouds of memory, subdued colors and senses.
As with all remembrances, eventually it slips past your eyelashes and your fingers.

Can't hold on to a Seattle sunset; can't hold on to a perfect stranger.

Only thing that's left to do is collect.

What We Own

It was dark, late, and cold. I wanted not much more than to promptly get back to whichever apartment I'd have been living in and expend every last ounce of my energy studying the intricacies of conflict. To bury myself in literature and not say a word to anyone.

Waiting for the bus, I was impatient. A man passed and sat precariously next to me on the bench, shifting and shuffling his feet in perfect uncomfortableness and discontent. He eyed me slipping the pepper spray into my pocket.

"I'm jealous of your phone," he says, in a voice wavering with unassuredness; I know he wanted to address me as soon as I walked past; I have a certain magnetic effect on strangers, particularly troubled ones. Stability has no effect on me, and those with charming, quaint, stable lives have no interest in me. So be it?

And much like any strange conversation set off by randomness or a stray remark, I ended up discussing the logistics of mobile technology with this 30 year old man, homeless, possibly 'not all there' in his head.

My specialty? Yeah, guess so.

I ended up helping this man's friend load his belongings onto the 49 bus, significantly unsure of what I was doing, but curious to see where this uneasiness would take me. So what if he was homeless? I've always wanted to know a homeless man's story. What's behind those tattered hats and dumpster-scented jackets, traces of Marlboro in the pockets and tobacco between the teeth? There's a certain undeniable elegance and one day I've been intending to get to the bottom of it. So to speak.

We took our seats on the bus, pushed down rudely by acceleration. I moved to make room for this strange man, fingering the pepper spray in my pocket but feeling safer by the minute. It was okay. He wasn't going to hurt me. He was just looking for a conversation -- aren't we all?

We're all craving rhetorical flourishes and welcoming intonations.

Day-to-day small talk can't be enough, not even close; its (eloquence) doesn't sing the blues like genuine words do. Rueful, sorrowful. We're craving something real.

The man introduces himself as "Andy," and we watch the other man -- his friend (sufficiently further down the line of insanity) -- empty and organize the contents of his dumpster findings.
Treasures? Andy seemed to think so.
He pulled out a DVD and handed it to Andy.
"Do you know how to tell the difference between a blank and one with something on it?"
"No, I don't."
"Well, here. See how this blank one doesn't have the same ribbons and lines? It usually works."
"Oh..."

His friend -- the name escapes me -- continues rummaging in his findings, pulls out an unopened bottle of tequila, small, a souvenir. I laugh enthusiastically, having been gulping one much like it the night before, and the notion of alcohol unmarred in dumpsters tickled my cynicism. The two hobos laughed too.

"You should give that to her, for helping you with your stuff," Andy suggests, and the other man complies, grinning and handing me the bottle.

I thank him graciously for the gift, amused by the unexpected profoundness of the circumstances. So many things -- many of them perfectly functional, but no longer wanted.

Finders, keepers.

The friend continued showing us his findings, pulling out a pair of gloves and offering them to me. Internet security. A pair of shoes. A wrench. He offered to me every single one of these objects, his generosity preceding his obvious insanity.


It's intensely startling how those with the least to give are the ones most eager to do so.


"You can't judge things by whether they're wanted. Everyone, anyone, someone, somewhere, will want every particular thing. Nothing -- no one -- is ever unwanted."

I nod in agreement. "I try not to judge... you never know..." I mumble quietly, remembering the pepper spray.

Andy nods. I'm sure he knows.

We exchange phone numbers; his is on a scrap of Marlboro carton -- one mystery solved: so that is what happens to those Marlboros. Numbers of strangers written on them, for future reference and perpetual memories.

You learn something new from every rhetorical flourish. All these strangers, all these welcoming intonations.

Cupcakes and Dinosaurs

We realized we needed groceries at midnight last night. Safeway happens to be open until 2am, and the walk there is possibly the most worrisome of anywhere. I put pepper spray in my pocket and made sure the top was prominently visible -- intimidation factor. Ruffle my hair a little bit and furrow my brow; I've got it.

Our grocery trip consists of (more) tortillas and additions of pickles and cheap bran cereal. Set for the week. We stumbled through the store -- not as empty as expected. Apparently Safeway is tremendously popular at one in the morning. Who would have thought that Elizabeth and I aren't the only ones who don't sleep.

Everything about grocery shopping intimidates me. The logistics of food placement and the frustratingly true fact that what you want is always clear across the store. Aisle 14.

After deciding that ramen was too expensive, we proceeded to the checkout counter.

Behind the register was an apathetic Asian teenager, delightfully plump and fundamentally bored out of his mind, however not for long -- a curly-haired, lanky man of about 25 made the kid crack a smile. Cashier looks to me, next in line, and asks with a hint of amusement, "Would you like to meet my friend here? He draws dinosaurs."

The man, no more than 30 and wearing a grey sweater matched immaculately with black-rimmed glasses doesn't hesitate.

"Do you like cupcakes?" he asks me, not quite meeting my eyes but not fully diverging his, either. I couldn't help noticing that all three of his bagged groceries consisted solely of a rainbow of cupcakes stacked in plastic boxes.
"I do, actually," I reply, intrigued. The cashier isn't sure what to do and Elizabeth is turning beet red as she tries not to laugh in the whimsical man's face.

"So he tells me you draw dinosaurs."
"I do! You see, I have millions of dinosaurs... in my heart."
He lovingly, genuinely, places a hand to the left side of his chest and smiles.
"They live in my heart."
"Oh."

Dino Man promptly pulls out a sketchbook and flips it open to a penned illustration of what appears to be a stegosaurus.
"There's the ankylosaurus... he had to have orthodontic treatment." And true enough, unarguably, the "ankylosaurus" grins from the page with braces on his teeth.

He turns the pages emphatically.
"This one broke his leg and needed a cast... This one feeds on garden flowers..."

I laughed, but he was entirely serious, determined in showing me his collection of dinosaurs.
"I could give you one -- right now -- if you promise me it'll have a good home," he offers, a look of intent on his face.
"I promise."
"Which one would you like?"
"The one with the orthodontic treatment."

He tears out the page with the ankylosaurus, braces, differently-sized eyes, and triangle scales. "Here you go!"
"Why thank you."

Customers in line behind me are not sure of a proper reaction.

"You see, these dinosaurs are meant to make people happy in their hearts. When they run out of cupcakes."
And with this proclamation of profoundness, he gathers up his cupcakes and shuffles out of Safeway, satisfied with his deed and newly-bought arsenal of baked goods.


"He's got it all figured out," I tell Elizabeth later that night. "All you really need in life are cupcakes and dinosaurs."

And it's true. Here were philosophers decoding the elusive meaning of happiness; theorems, algorithms, formulas, brain scans, endorphin levels. Nonsense. What is science when you've found happiness in an ankylosaurus and a cupcake? It's the simple things. All I needed was a curly-haired man with boxes of cupcakes and a sketchbook of dinosaurs to show me this.

Dresses

You know, I'm not the pretty, graceful girl everyone wants. I'm bitter, sarcastic, cynical, obnoxious, and terribly, terribly, flawed.

I'm not feminine or girly nor do I know how to act it. I can't seem to pick out flowing, soft, flowery dresses and skirts and wide-sleeved blouses to match; I happily mold into my plain t-shirts and baggy jeans. My hair is pulled back and unbrushed and I've never quite gotten down the loose, effortlessly beautiful style.

The words that come out of my mouth aren't blooming compliments or airy laughs; they're hard-hitting truths, and more likely than not, written prose.

I grin too wide and laugh too loud.

Leaning on one arm and popping up a leg prettily is more of a challenging task than solving Euler's equations, and flirting is another mythical concept altogether.

I'm sub par. A commodity, a rarity, an unpairity in the gene pool.

The only underwear I own is black cotton and silk is a mystery fabric to me.

My world is seen through clear glasses, precise. What I see, I say.

Glamour and beauty are as foreign as charm and nothing about this will change, not until I make a conscious effort to stop focusing on universal secrets and pay attention to the realities of my own consciousness.
That's what it is.

Noah and the Whale

It's funny -- it's uncanny -- how a measure of notes and lethargic whispering of a song can mean so much in just so many verses.

The timing has to be there, too. The mathematical precision of the moment about to pass, and, enter, first chorus. Perfectly synced with heartbeats and intangential ideas. What is this emotion, and why does a song run, crawl, flow, drift, exist so frustratingly, so perfectly, next to it?
Frustration in perfection. That's where we are.

So, let's see. Number one.

5 Years' Time

Following?

Number two.

The First Days of Spring

And I wish I could detach the associations and the memories and the overarching relativities, but that's what songs do to you. That's what lyrical bars and human experiences are. Just words and guitars.

A Letter to a Friend

I want to make as many people happy as I can. Whether this be through good conversation, small acts of kindness, or just listening to someone, it needs to be done. The world needs more humility. I know it won't change anything overnight, or even in years, but there needs to be a starting point. In Gandhi's famous words I live more and more by, "be the change you want to see in the world." It's so true. No one takes the time to realize that we're all human and we all crave the same basic things... We've lost touch with humanity so much, too preoccupied with the repetitive social cycle and ridiculous standards. Really, where's the human element? The compassion, the love, the simple understanding? Why does no one think?

I see so many problems everywhere, so much hate... Someone got shot in the head, point blank, in a robbery at Walmart yesterday. The guy was 20 and had dreams of attending pilot school. He was earning money for his education, and was shot just for that - money. I still don't believe money is the root of all evil. Money is tangible symbolism. Human nature gone awry is the root of evil, and I believe that can be fixed. We were all born a blank slate and loaded with unique experiences that shape us - good, bad, unfortunate, interesting, dull. How we respond to them is where the defining factor lies, but how we respond also depends on experiences even before that... Where does it start? When does it end?

There's so much mystery in the world, so much uncovered, so much yet not understood. I don't claim to know everything about the world. The more I know - and I consider myself well-educated - the more I really don't know. The more I wonder. The more I think. This might explain why I've been so completely lost these past few years... I know so much, but don't know anything at all. In fact, how can you know anything if it's all relative anyway? It's an unsettling, stomach-tickling-and-turning thought, that nothing we know is real. We do not see what is real; we see what we are.

And all these thoughts and sights and sounds and observations are steadily driving me to the edge. It's lonely here, watching everyone make prom preparations while I contemplate the intricacies and complexities of the universe. Still haven't assumed normalcy. Maybe I should. Maybe that's the key to survival, to happiness. But where will the world be, if one more person who preoccupies herself with starving children in Uganda, our civil rights and liberties, human nature, philosophy, words of the centuries, love, compassion, understanding...were lost? It's an uphill battle we're fighting, Melanie, and it's just as hard to give in as it is to keep going. We're stuck in realization and wavering on action. At least, I am.

There's so much good in the world. So many amazing things, but they're easily overshadowed by media negativity and triviality. People need to learn to see.

Someday, Melanie, someday.

I found all these things

I found all these things, all these pictures, essays, poems written and notes scribbled, from years past to days ago. They’ve been buried and overlooked while my handwriting changed form and shape across the years, they’ve waited in past while I learned new lessons, but now they’re in a box by my bed, neatly organized into folders and stacks of thought. Five years, all here. These are my thoughts and this is my development as a human being from immaturity to insight. Has a lot changed?

Each essay, each picture I pick up and analyze has a distinct wave of memories tied to it -- a conglomeration of a wave of dysphoric emotion. These years, what happened? The contact proof sheets from photography bring memories of intense physical pain and pill-popping logs, of sunny, nostalgic days and ultimate peacefulness in the darkroom. They bring me memories of Coldplay on my blue CD player and developer chemicals on my hands. I stayed in that darkroom for hours at a time, and I remember nothing else from 9th grade than rolling up my sleeves and clicking exposure times. I’ll try to fix you, fix you.

The essay from 10th grade in neat, quaint, stoic writing evokes the translucent purple water bottle. 2 liters a day. 3 diet pills a day. White unknown substance. Hope in chemicals.

The frantic, knowing scribbles from 11th show what it was like to be buried in literacy, in minute societal observation and elusive connection. It was a time of brilliance, of insanity, of sitting on curbs and hiding prescription pills in gloves. I’ll look back on this spot, I thought, as I slipped another pill into a woolen finger. The sun was also shining and my high-tops tap tapped to the rhythm of academic delinquency, oddly rebellious and appropriately out of place. Tap, tap.
It’s all here. Calorie counting, modeling agency names. Observations and metaphors jotted down on lined paper and forgotten.

And years from now, with my college diploma in hand, will I really look at this box again, fold back its flimsy cardboard sleeves, and feel the memories of a distant teenage past? It’s where I came from. This was me. These were my thoughts, hopes, dreams, preoccupations. In a box. I’ve never wanted to be boxed. So this is irony, tickling me its final goodbye.

Microwars

Lying in the grass, eyes closed, thinking of the perfect string of words to put onto these next few blank pages. Wondering about my fear of pronouns. Fear of pen ink that doesn't want to be read. Fear of passages that will remain daft and vague, unreadable.
So many trivial fears when what should be crossing my mind are wars, death, sacrifice, and the ultimate human truths that everyone strives to conquer.

I used to write in beautiful, brilliant eloquence, embellishing clarity with ribbons of adjectives, nouns, verbs with color. Now I can only say things straight-forwardly, logically, plainly -- what I wanted, wasn't it? Logic? Well, now I've got neither. How's that for being careful?

I wake up from failed writer revelation and talk back to the blades of grass, mediocre sayings. A wasp, comparable in size and in intimidation, stares back.
"Come closer; I dare you." Its eyes, outmassing its body, tell me. I open my own lazily and watch the creature (though I can't stand wasps and am deathly afraid of them) move from blade to blade relentlessly; its terrifying body seemed no bigger than mine all of a sudden, and when emerging from the field of greens and of sun and lonely summer evenings...

It moved painstakingly and with great caution; its valiant efforts seemed so futile, so hopelessly in vain, so sadly pathetic and brutally lost. And it wasn't a matter of intimidation anymore, and certainly not fear, when the yellow-specked legs fought for standing on the lowest blade of grass.
It had no direction. It turned from me and wandered painfully away, turned around and looked me deeply in the eye again -- a warning?

But what use, and of what merit, is the warning (and perhaps all of communication) when we're outnumbered by so many obstacles bigger than ourselves? Why fight, why crawl, why move from blade to blade, grassy field to grassy field, in search of the smallest, faintest, wasp-yellow speck of direction?
Maybe it knew when it got there.
Maybe I'll know when I get there.

We kept looking at each other, kept our speechless and actionless fight, until it decided enough was enough and aimed its course directly at me. Still terrified of wasps, I knew I could crush it and pilfer its life quicker than the green sea would, but I didn't. I was comfortable in my grassy spot, with just the right amount of sunshine, that I could easily silence its aggressive eyes with a swipe of a hand, of a foot, of a book. It would be gone, and I would be left alone again, enjoying the solitary tranquility of the summer evening. Alone, again. Fears, again. Waiting on words, again.

That's the goal, isn't it? I'll watch people come and go, but I'll have more interaction with a struggling insect than any human being.

I move. Of all the self-imposing, powerful, and establishing actions I could have taken, I move to a different location.

And that's the truth of it, isn't it? Of peace, of wars, of violence, of love, of civility? All there is left to do is move.

I don't want your wars and your primitive, mediocre, bloody settlements -- save your screaming children and your dying women in favor of something you are just as capable of doing -- not with your pride, but with your mind.

Save your wars for an era devoid of logic, of reasoning, of compassion; save your brutal might for protecting those who call for it; save your destruction for diseases that evade it.

Just breathe fresh-cut sun-soaked grass and think about what it means to move.

Civilization's here. We're waiting for your progress.

Friendship at any cost.

What differentiates, distinguishes a friend from everyone else?
What is it that matters that makes a friend different from everyone else?

Before these questions can even begin to be answered, something that I would hope would be obvious should be pointed out: there are either, or both, degrees of friendship, or kinds of friendship, such that, there must be some variation accordingly in the answers to questions like the above. [I don't actually expect to come to conclusions on these questions.]

I should also specify that it seems to me that I attribute friendship less liberally than most others. It takes quite a bit for me to consider someone a friend. I don't presume that whatever it takes for me to finally consider someone a friend is somehow what it universally takes to be a friend at all. It's just that, for me, you're either in, or out.

Well, almost.

Damn near close enough. Because there is still usually quite a distinct barrier between those who circumstantially end up falling in between and those who are in. There is still quite a distance between the former and me.

But I speak honestly when I ask the essential question - What makes a friendship? - because so often I feel utterly blank on the answer, even though I would like to think that I know that one or two people are friends, that they are genuinely set apart from the rest of people. My whole life, the notion of friendship in others has been a mystery to me, an unsolvable puzzle between persons I can't seem to understand. And yet, being the kind of creature I am, I find myself driven to seek it, find myself feeling it to be desirable. For what? A connection. But it is precisely that, that is always lacking.

Sometimes, wandering through memories is like walking along a fence, myself on one side, the world of people on the other, a permanent barrier, a permanent division. The question is, is the fence too high to be climbed? Or do we simply find that we don't want to step over to the other side? Or perhaps, the lock on the only gate, for which the key has been lost, has long since rusted shut?

I grew up watching my peers, trying to understand - what? something, I don't even know what I was looking for - what accounted for friendship, what it was that made two people real friends. I so often felt like everyone else knew, but for some reason I didn't. Maybe everyone else felt that, too, but it never seemed like it. Then again, maybe they would have said, if I had told them these feelings I had, that I never seemed like there was a problem. I don't know what I looked like to them, what I seemed like from their perspective. I couldn't see the world from their perspective at all, but it was a mystery I so longed to figure out and understand. Because I was lonely, too, and it hurt. Even though it also hurt in an entirely different way to try to interact with people, or if it didn't hurt, it just didn't work. It was like trying to solve a complicated math problem without having any of the formulas: if there was any hope of solving it, I'd have to invent my own formulas. I suppose that's what I've been doing all this time, but they don't really work: the answers are mere approximations, and not even close ones at that.

How does one know whether a person one is confronted with at any moment is a genuine friend or not? How can one even measure such a thing? But surely you must in some way, for you can make the distinction. I don't presume here that one can or should know it with certainty, for, of so many things, we cannot have certainty in our beliefs. All I inquire is a method for distinguishing, a criterion or standard against which to measure, even if our use of the instrument, or the instrument itself, is hazy and blurred.

I have a deep mistrust of people. And I didn't know that for a very long time, until quite recently, until I had the opportunity to learn that about myself because of a very special friendship - a friendship I dare say the loss of would be similar enough metaphorically to the loss of the right side of my own body. Never has my mistrust of others so terrorized a friendship, and so terrorized me, and shredded my own mind and self. The reason, I think, that I was never before aware of this mistrust is that it doesn't come into play until a person gets close enough. And almost no one ever gets that close. I can count on one hand how many people have. The mistrust stems from my inability to read people's minds, to understand what they are thinking, feeling, what their motivations are by which I might understand why they do what they do, say what they say, etc. While "mind-reading" in the science-fictional sense never occurs, there is a sense of mind-reading that really does occur on a regular basis, and it is that which allows people, and very young children, to easily understand each other to a fair degree through their body language, facial expressions, the tones and inflections of their voice while they speak, etc. If you doubt how much of other people you can understand, then you are likely thinking far too complexly. The simple act of pointing is something humans inherently understand the meaning of - not including, obviously, those who are mentally retarded to a severe enough degree, but then again, perhaps even they, too, do understand that simple act. But our closest primate cousins, on the other hand, don't get the act of pointing, without rigorous and patient training. An infant gets it nearly instantly. Consider, too, how easily you can tell whether a person approaching you is planning to attack you, or greet you. Do you think you could so easily read the approaching behavior of an unfamiliar dog? Or a bear? If you've ever had to communicate in body language with someone who speaks a language you don't know, or who is deaf, consider all the very simple and incredibly subtle behaviors that go into the simplest "conversation". This is a kind of mind-reading. But that's just the easy stuff. Human interactions are regularly far more complex than that. Consider what it would take to figure out that someone was being condescending towards you, or was hitting on you, or was distracted by something weighing heavy on his mind instead of being uncomfortable with you. It is the more complicated and more subtle sorts of things about what a person is thinking and feeling that I am very poor at reading. If it is not rather obvious, I will undoubtedly miss it. Well, even that is not quite right, because there have certainly been instances in which other people claimed a person's feeling or thought or motivation was obvious, despite that I missed it entirely. If it requires attributing more mental goings on, more cognitive action, then I am likely to miss it. Thus, the minds of other people are far more inaccessible to me than to most others, including most of you.

Most people think I am exaggerating when I say these things. I learn to read particular people well enough that it is not usually a problem - so often, they are not close enough to me for it to ever arise as a problem. But I observe them very carefully for awhile. In most social situations I come across, I have, by this time, learned enough "rules", so to speak, to get by well enough. But most of those situations are rather superficial anyway, aren't they? There are only a few people who know me well enough, and have seen me enough in the kinds of situations where it arises, who know that I really can be utterly oblivious or confused about the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others. And even fewer know how painfully and confusingly maddening it can be for me.

But this disability in reading others has been the source, again and again, of my failures in interacting with others, and getting it, whatever it is that is supposed to be gotten for connecting with people, and building and developing and maintaining a real friendship. I couldn't tell you how it happened, for that would require me to see what it was that I had missed, that in pretty much every attempt that seemed to go well for awhile, there was a point at which it broke down, for what seemed to me, from my perspective, to happen literally for no reason at all. Whatever the reason was, I had entirely missed it. From my perspective, it was always out of the blue. I presume that for at least most of those incidents, it wasn't out of the blue, and there was a reason, just that it was undetectable by me.

Now, have this happen to you enough times your whole life, and you'll learn to over-cautiously back away at the slightest sign of the fizzle of a friendship. But that, my dear reader, is precisely where my question enters, and plagues me! How am I to read signs that are in a language unknown to me? What does it mean for someone to be a real friend, such that I can distinguish a friend from he who isn't? Unavoidably, there must be expectations - we cannot parse the world into kinds without being able to perceive some significant degree of regularity. And such regularity provides us with reasonable expectations, even if we accept some degree of error, some lack of rigor, and we allow the world to stray from the hazy lines we draw, that from far away appear bold and clear, to delineate one kind of thing from another, sets of reasonable expectations must be our guide in the conclusions we draw about kinds. What, then, is it that makes a friend?

Not just so that I can know whether he or she is a genuine friend, but so that he or she can know, too, that I am genuinely a friend.

The disability goes both ways here, for I have never met a person who can come close to accurately reading my mind, my thoughts, feelings, and motivations. But don't misunderstand me here, for I don't necessarily hold a high degree of expectation that others should be able to read much of my mind. In fact, I tend to presume they can't. I do, think, however, those who are close to me, who are supposed to be genuine friends, should have acquired some ability to read some of my mind. I don't think that is unreasonable, considering that most people seem to think this rather normal, for people so often speak of knowing someone well enough and having known them long enough to be able to read the nuances of his particular behavior and have a deeper understanding of his thoughts and feelings. But furthermore, I don't mean to imply that people just fail to accurately read me and that's that. The fact is, very often, and rather consistently, people misread me, misjudging my thoughts, feelings, or motivations for those that they are not, because they take my body language to express something that turns out to be different from what I actually think or feel. In other words, it's not as if people fail to read me and don't see anything at all, but rather, that they read me incorrectly. My mind turns out to be just as inaccessible to them as theirs is to me! And, oh, I'm sure you can imagine, with how much skepticism I am met when I attempt to assure them that they have misread me. Interestingly, then, there is a kind of mistrust on their part of me. But, I don't want to go off too far in that direction. Yet.

The point is, I have learned that I cannot trust my own judgments about the thoughts, feelings, and motivations other people have that are supposed to be detectable in their behaviors, body language, facial expressions, all the nuances of their manner of speaking, etc. But ultimately, even if I have asked the person to help me understand him, I still have only my judgments about what he says, whether he is genuine, whether I can really understand him with regards to his other behaviors, for his words are no more direct access to his mind than his facial expressions or bodily behaviors, so it makes no difference whether I speak of mistrusting myself or mistrusting others, for I cannot somehow avoid myself in this whole process. And in the end, I feel like I am an isolated island.

And I know, I know, this is a rather roundabout entry - who hath actually read it all the way through? - but forgive me, it is 5:30 in the dark morning hours and I have yet to sleep. And as always, there are so many voices swirling around inside my head.

But the question remains: What is special about another person that makes him a genuine and dear friend? Or conversely, What is different and special about one's treatment of another such that that treatment is to treat him as dear friend?

It is not just treatment, it would seem to me, but the care one feels for a dear friend, because he matters, and he makes a difference in one's life, for he is valuable, and so his own well-being is of concern, and it would make a difference to lose him. To know, feel, believe that one matters to another: could there be a genuine friendship without this on both sides? Is this not, in a sense, the nature of trust?

How does one know whether one matters to another?
How does one know that one has shown another that he matters?

Blind Shades of Blue

It was a regular Saturday evening, 8 o'clock, at this enchanting spot I usually come to watch the sun set behind the horizon. A year ago, I decided to make this a weekly ritual, to sit on the yellowed grass, hidden by the trees, and watch the orange glow slowly disappear. The place is as familiar to me as my own home; I know the sounds the leaves make when I shuffle past the trees to claim my choice seating; I know the chilled air that breathes in my face while I wait; I know that sometimes I can hear the sun as it hits the horizon.

This regular Saturday evening, 8 o'clock, I wasn't as sure of what I knew.

An elderly man, smiling, walked into my safe haven of sunset-watching and set up an easel not too far from where I sat. He made another trip back to his car and returned with two wooden chairs, then another, returning with a black canvas bag, which he placed down gently alongside the easel.

I continued watching this man, intrigued. Why the two chairs? We were the only ones here and he made no gesture of acknowledgement towards my presence.

He opened his black bag, torn at the handles, and pulled out a palette and an assortment of paint tubes-- all shades of blue. He placed a cream-white canvas on the ledge of his easel and began to paint with his eyes closed.

An hour passed.

He had still not opened his eyes, just kept painting.

I was completely in awe of this man.

I knew I wanted to talk to him, to learn of the mysteries that were his two chairs, his shades of blue, him. But as always, all I could do was watch out of the corner of my eye, pretend not to notice while the details of the situation screamed at me from the easel, the palette, the chairs, the wrinkles around the man's worn eyes and warm smile.

He brought two chairs, but was alone. He set up an easel to paint, but had not opened his eyes.

I approached this man curiously and cautiously. I wasn't afraid of harm, but I was wary of encountering something I could not understand, could not grasp. Until now, I had resided in the familiar; I had surrounded myself with what I knew, understood. I didn't understand this man.

And although I made barely a sound as I stepped carefully towards him, he opened his eyes and we stood, frozen in the moment but speeding ahead-- me, with my barricade of security broken down, and him, with his kind eyes and peaceful smile. We stood in that perpetuating moment, not judging, just questioning.

He spoke first.

"May I help you with anything?"

I stood for a moment, unable to voice the words that had been multiplying in my head.

Finally I said, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I was wondering how you're painting with your eyes closed."

"Why, darling. I'm not the one painting, my wife is. You see, she's sitting right there. I'm just holding the brush for her."

I stare at where he motions, but all I see is the empty wooden chair.

He sees my confused expression and adds, "Blue was her favorite color."

It all made sense. The two chairs, the smiling, worn man, the blind painting. It made sense and I knew; knew that no matter how alone we feel or how hard we search for isolation, we never are. My sunset-watching spot was not my own anymore; no, now it was shared by infinity: the man, his wife, myself, and the countless people who might choose to witness it with us. The man is never alone either; his wife is there with him, sitting, watching him paint the sunset in hues of blue. For his closed pair of eyes, always, there are her open ones.

I asked to see the man's painting. He nodded, turning the easel around to face me.

It was the most magnificent sight I have seen in my life.

He saw my conspicuous admiration and asked if I would like to keep it. I quickly shook my head no. At last I managed to say, "I could never take something so wonderful from you; your wife painted this for you. You need to keep this."

He smiled, and I thanked him for explaining his mysteries. As I left, I noticed him pull another canvas out of his bag and start painting again, eyes closed, shades of blue.

Seeing Is Believing

My neighbor walks up to me and says, "Why on Earth would you want to take pictures of my old crappy fence and those awful rotting leaves?"

I turn to her, smile, and say, "What crappy fence and rotting leaves?"

I won't put two and two back together

Today I questioned things again.
Everyday they tell me to accept the facts, accept what's true, accept what's real, what happens. This happened, they say. So it had to cause this. There's no other explanation. The truth is all here and it's no use disputing it or widening its boundaries; the laws of living were placed there for a reason, firmly ensconsed between exceptions and sheer imagination.

Today, again, I doubted it.
My father led me by the sleeve to his office at Western State Hospital, a mental institution. He pulled me along, a puppet on a string, through wired courtyards and tattered volleyball nets, through chipped picnic tables and yellow grass, through the Washington puddles and the monitored enclosures.

"This is what happens," he tells me, strengthening his grip on my flimsy sleeve as I worry not of my supposed deterioration, but of the tearing of my fabric.

"Dr. Ziskin, I have a job now. Thank you for your guidance."
The thin, meek man we pass to my left smiles kindly to my father, offering a bony-fingered wave.
"They're friendly, aren't they?" father asks, nonchalant.
"Yes."
"That one murdered five people when he was 19."
"Oh."
"Not so friendly, are they?"
"No."

I questioned the sterile silence of his dim office, the stacks of books, the lists of tasks. I questioned the DSM-IV placed on my lap, opened for me to 'Borderline Personality Disorder.'
I questioned it.

"You've been here before."
"Yes."
"What has changed?"
"Nothing."
"Do you think you're crazy?"
"Possibly."

It's not hard for me to formulate the words anymore. He knows, he knows of the malfunctions in my mind, of the neurons in my brain gone awry. Of my disordered personality. He knows all of it, and more, because he is doctor and he is God--and I am student and I am crazy.

It's not hard for me to wrap my tongue around these damning words I'm about to say; he's uncovered my flaws and unwound them like strands of DNA for scientific interpretation, letting me slide through his fingers with calculated observation. I'm here, Dr. Ziskin, I'm here and I am certainly crazy.

I read about 'Bipolar Personality Disorder', the text obscenely exposed in my lap, vulgar truth.

"Well... that's me."
"That's everybody."