Monday, April 27, 2009

wreck

i want to be shipwrecked on an island in the pacific
i want to get away from people, maybe i'll bring emma with me 
i want to forget time and live off my hands
i want to sleep and dream under the stars
i want to unlearn everything i've been taught
i want to spend my days in blissful ennui
i want to build castles in the sand and watch them wash away in the sea

but i'll probably die before i reach the shore
but i'll probably miss everyone and emma would get eaten by rats
but i'll probably end up building a shitty time dial
but i'll probably construct a treehouse
but i'll probably end up bringing some books
but i'll probably grow restless 
but i'll probably grow weary of such a meaningless amusement

d-a-m-n-n-i-t

sometimes life is an insanely difficult dichotomy 

Saturday, April 25, 2009

mr. nice guy

I suppose that every boy goes through some traumatic heart break. Some gut-wrenchingly, awful, emotional distress and I have had first hand experience. As a kid, much like I do now, I thought about girls a lot, not like in a super perverty way, although sometimes it happens, but just superficial daydreams about their beauty and splendor. As a pretty chubby, nerdy, kid, I thought I would never get laid, I thought I would spend the rest of my life a stupid, loser virgin. Not much has changed except the virgin part. Even now, I'm not too good with words, I've never been much of a talker, or a looker, or a charmer so I don't know how I even came to be lucky enough to have snagged a few nice lasses. 

I've only been in love once. My college girlfriend who I started dating just months into freshmen year and tumultuously through the end of college until things bottomed out and we hated each other and had screaming matches and acted like children. I loved her with everything I had, it was a passionate love. Some of my most cherished memories have been sitting in quiet contemplation while we watched cherry blossoms in the fall, holding hands. The sweet smell of her hair. The way her face would light up when she saw me even if I had just seen her the day before. The way we would glance and grin at each other at a crowded party like we were sharing a private joke. Waking up in the morning and being with her. It was everything to me at the time.

It's been three years and I'm still reeling from lingering shockwaves. She had ripped my heart out, stomped on it and then spit down my throat. Sometimes she still haunts me and I see her face, or remember little quips or conversations and I feel a deep penetrating emptiness. Like maybe I won't ever find that again, but I suppose in a sense I was lucky enough to have at least experienced it once in my life despite all the ugliness towards the end. Even beautiful things sometimes get broken and can't really be fixed or found again. And all I'm left with are these stupid memories which I wish would just go away. 

I've dated a lot in the last few years since then. I've found the dating to be quite an odd ordeal. I feel like the older people get, the more walls and safeguards they put up while on the conventional date. I hate playing this "contrite" game, like chess where every move is calculated and pondered upon. Am I talking too much? Is their shit in my teeth? How do we take care of the bill? Am I going to get laid tonight? Should I just call it quits? Why is the mascara getting on gunky on her lashes? Maybe I should get hammered drunk to make this date more interesting? A million questions and thoughts run through my mind and it's all very much tiring. 

I love girls, but still find them very much perplexing. If I am reticent and calm and don't pay them very much attention they think I'm an asshole and some chicks really dig that and want to find out more. I still have some friends who purposely go out to clubs and bars to get laid and are generally women-haters and that gets very tiring in the end also.  For a few months I really wanted to start being a better person so I opened up more, stayed aloof and attentive, being your typical nice guy and honestly that shit just didn't really bode well with me. Maybe I'm just thinking way too much into it, maybe I won't ever get laid again, and maybe after a few more months I can be considered a born again virgin.

In the end, I just really want to be happy with where I am and I'm getting there. I love what I do, I love waking up and wanting to work hard and doing all that but there's still something missing. I've built up this hard exterior and I really think it's about time that I let drop it and get along with life. Everyone needs to grow up on at some point and it's about high time I did so, but I'm not promising that I still won't get that old itch and want to create chaos, kick and destroy, and wallow in my own dirt and filth, because being bad is sometimes fun, but so is having someone to share it with.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

silly little dream

There's not many people that are happy with what they do. Some people wake up dreading every minute of their day. Keeping busy to avoid, to suppress, to run away from things which they fear the most. I had a conversation with a friend the other day in which she said that she loved what she did because it distracted her from the daily grind. I did not understand this at all. What I want most in life to be self-fulfilled, to try to understand the deeper intricacies, and to maybe figure it all out before it all ends. No matter how much money anyone ever offers me, I don't think I would ever go back to the grind. To make money for money's sake, having a nice wrist watch, cuff links, power suits, company credit cards. 

"God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact." - palahniuk

My parents moved out of the country about a half year ago and I suppose distance really shows how much you really care for someone. I talk to them more now then I did when I lived with them. I am happier now than I can remember having ever been since childhood, without the aid of drugs, massive amounts of alcohol, women, and generally living a lifestyle which I thought was what I had wanted. Working my ass off at corpo in my monkey suit so that I could sustain what I thought was what was to be the rest of my life. It was a sobering experience to drop everything, to give a big "fuck you" to the stupid company and cunt ass whore boss who was fucking everyone, to have no income, to have to live off my parents again, to watch as I took two steps back as the rest of my college friends seemed to be moving forward. 

There's not much advice that I have taken from my dad. The last time I went back to Taiwan, a lot of his employees kept asking me when I was going to start working for him and planning to take over the company. They kept wondering when I would be moving back since my dad is getting older and when I would take the command post. For a long time I was just in this post adolescence rebel bullshit. As stubborn and pigheaded we both are, I have come to realize that he is a great man, with faults like anyone else, but is someone I want to aspire to be. 

Commerce is something which sustains the culture we live in and is necessary for the world to revolve, but it's just not for me. I feel like I've finally found the thing which I was meant to do and that was the hard part. Now the goal is to just keep pushing forward, to keep going forward until I feel like puking, until I feel like I can't go any further, and then push forward some more. I am incredibly fortunate, to be able to chase this silly little dream. I want my life to mean something and I am still searching, always trying for something, even if it means nothing to anyone else.