the day after christmas

it was the day after christmas and i was boarding a flight to taiwan. it was probably the most uneventful christmas i ever had. my entire family was in taiwan so i spent the holiday by myself and emma. i had beer, leftovers, and chips for dinner, but at least i wasn't all by my lonesome.

i got to the airport early the day of my flight and had a few hours to kill so i headed to the bar and had about a half a dozen drinks before boarding. thank god the flight wasn't sold out so the middle seat was unoccupied. international flights mean all you can drink beer so i threw a few back. i was able to take an hour nap before i was woken up by the three babies surrounding my seat. it was not pleasant. i couldn't fall back asleep so i watched 5 shitty movies in a row.

my uncle picked me up from the taipei international airport and i was working with 2 hours sleep in the previous 24 hours. i stayed over his house for the night, before heading down south to kahosiung where my parents live. i would have to say that the trip out to the homeland so far has been a bit of a drag, besides the fact that i've been seeing this new girl back home and at least i was able to think about her every now and again and smile.

i've been dating quite frequently this year and definitely have learned more and more about what i don't want in a relationship. i suppose that a lot of the relationships that i'm involved in don't ever work out because of my own ineptitude in keeping a woman, or at least keeping a woman happy.

i suppose a lot of the times i cave in to my own insecurities and vices, which leads down a perilous path that i can never stray from. but i like this new girl quite a bit. she makes me happy. she makes me feel like things will be alright. when i am away from her i see her face and things are never as bad as they seem.

but i understand that we are just at the beginning of things. things are light and fun, new and exciting. we have not yet seen the underbelly of the beast and i am hoping that he does not rear his ugly head.

beautiful autumn day

so the other day i was hanging out during a break from class, enjoying the unusual sun that san francisco has been experiencing this fall. it was a nice day and i was doing well in class. i just felt like enjoying the weather. i saw my friend jen hanging out having a cigarette and she waved hi, so i went and sat by her on the bench. we had met over the summer in a landscape painting class.

i didn't really know her too well, so maybe friend is too strong a word, she's mostly just an acquaintance, someone i see from time to time. we talked art and painting for a bit, just social chatter to kill up time and take away the silent awkwardness. jen is thin and cute, always wearing real fly kicks, she has long black hair with a blond streak running through it. she puffs on cigarettes constantly, but in a classy way like those chicks from the 20s.

"how are you doing with everything else?" she asked.

you know how sometimes shit is going bad in your life and you just feel like spilling the beans to someone, and it usually ends up being someone you don't really know. and that's what kind of happened.

"shitty to be honest. i just found out my dog has cancer and i recently broke up with my girlfriend." she looked at me with concern, but didn't say anything. "it's just one of those things."

"why did you break up with your girlfriend?"

"things weren't working out, we were on two different pages. it's not like anything bad happened, we just grew apart. if anything, it's the only really good break up i've ever really had."

we talked a bit more about relationships and all that and then we got on about the subject about religion. she told me how she had found god after a traumatic experience she went through with her mom and all that. she was raised catholic, but was now christian, attending church several times a week, filled with salvation and good faith.

"have you ever been religious?" she asked

"yes, when i was a kid. my parents are both pretty religious still, but i kind of grew out of it during the early years of high school."

"what happened?"

"i dunno, i suppose me and god just weren't on the same page anymore either."

she started getting a little serious and told me that god always had a place for me, and how much he loved me, and how that he would always be there for me even if i didn't know it.

"to be honest, i don't think i'll ever get back into religion. i don't see how i can't just live my life without it. i mean, i can just be a good person can't i? as long as i don't fuck over other people and just live my life the way i want to, isn't it good enough? i know that everyone sins, but mostly i just do self-destructive shit, i don't harm anyone else."

"i understand."

"i always imagined i was going to die young anyways. what's the use of trying to think any differently now. i live my life with bouts of momentary happiness and that's good enough for me, at least for now. i don't care really about anything, because everything is temporary anyways, family, love, relationships, all of it."

i looked at her while i said this and i could see her well up a little bit.

"i know that you don't mean what you're saying. you're going to make me cry."

"i don't mean to. it's just the way i feel. i suppose that i'm still just a boy still clutching onto the remnants of my childhood."

we didn't say anything for a long time. just sat there, in the sun.

"at least i know one thing though, when my personal life is fucked, my work is at it's best. when when my personal life is good, my work is shit."

she smiled and nodded. i told her i had to get back to class and i gave her a hug and thanked her for listening to me bitch.

i stood up to go and said i would catch her later.

"hey daniel"

"yeah"

"is there anything that you want me to pray for you about?"

i thought about it before i answered.

"ask god to not let my dog die and that i'll have a good show in february.

she gave me a sad smile and i went back inside. i felt sad and empty like i hadn't felt in a long, long time.

the boy who could not love

still at the peak of his prime, young henry was the epitome of cool. he grew up splitting his time in manchester and new york, borne to a well-to-do family with loads and loads of old money. he grew up in the private schooling system, always doing well, played rugby and basketball, went to an ivy league and so on and so on. life was good for young Henry who also happened to be an only child, so he was lavished with all the attention in the world.

he was in the financial sector, not so much because he wanted to be, but because it was just something to do. he had appearances to up keep and zeroes to pad in his bank account. he never considered to do anything else, because he never had the urge to, his life had always been comfortable and he preferred to keep it that way. no ripples in the pond.

young henry was a good looking boy, hair immaculate, athletic, calculated, with just a touch of ennui. the young ladies were in love with him, hearts a fluttering, voices choked, and brows damp with anticipation every time he stepped into a room. henry knew his place in the world and he took advantage of it. his relationships he kept discreet, for he was not a boy to kiss and tell, but if the young ladies were looking for love, they would find that young henry had an empty heart.

henry merely saw girls as trophies, play things that tickled his fancy from time to time. he had read and learned about love through books and movies, but never himself experienced it. it was merely a word. something people made up through whimsical fancy. some elaborate and unidentifiable emotion which did not really exist. to him, it was just a matter of finding the next best thing, like buying a new wardrobe after the previous season's were out of date.

so this is the way young henry lived his life, flying across the globe, dining at fine places in nice clothes with beautiful women. and i suppose most people looking in would say that young henry had it made. he did not mean to break girl's hearts, but it came with the territory. he never let on that there could be something more. he lived the life of a young prince, without real worry or concern, protected everywhere.

then one day young henry met sue. they were at a party for a mutual friend's birthday and she was on the arm of some other boy. she smiled and made pleasantries and they shook hands and young henry was quite taken by her beauty and poise. he knew then and there that he would make her his.

henry was not used to chasing after women. it was something that he never really had to do, for they swooned over him and were always at his beck and call. sue was different, for she did not really care. she did not care that he was of old money. she did not care that he dressed well. she did not care that he went to the finest schools. she did not care that he had a bank account with many zeroes. but young henry was a charming and persuasive boy and soon they were going together regularly.

no matter how hard young henry tried though, he could not have sue in his grasp. with other women, he knew that he was in control, steering the course of action. he was collected in the pocket, cool, and poised. sue went about her own things, she did not lavish attention on henry. she did not bend to his will and this threw young henry off.

he knew that he wanted to possess her, but did not know how to go about it. he bought her fancy things, took her to nice places, and gave her anything she wanted, but sue would just smile and nod, seemingly unimpressed by such advances. young henry was at a loss. he tried and tried, yet he was getting no where and for a boy who had always gotten what he wanted, this was some monster all together different.

then just as quickly as they had met, sue was one day gone.

"we are just different people"

"what do you mean sue? how has that got to do with anything?"

"i feel differently about you then you with me. i'm thinking about the future. this just wouldn't work out."

"but sue, i have never felt like this for anyone. i don't want you to go"

"it's just the way things have to be, you must understand henry."

"but sue, i love you."

young henry could see the tears well up in sue's eyes, but he knew that she did not feel the same. she kissed him hard and it was the end of everything. sue turned away and walked out of henry's life, just like that.

young henry continued with his life as usual because there was nothing else that he could do. he thought about what he said to sue, and he wondered if it was true. because to him love was still just a word. some mere whimsical fancy those lavished when they were out of their minds. he convinced himself that it was just a mistake. a blip in his own consciousness, an act of desperation. for really, there was no such thing as love.

oh my pretty little girl

i remember the first time i laid eyes on her. i was going to davis at the time and had been looking for a puppy for months. an ex girlfriend and i had been going to various shelters and adoption events looking for the perfect girl. i knew i wanted a female pup because i had always had males and i felt that the time was right for a pretty little girl.

some people don't ever believe in love at first sight, but i say i can prove them wrong. when i saw her i knew she was mine. she had that stupid ear to ear pitbull grin and whipped her tail side to side like a maniac, much like she does even to this day. i fell in love right then and there.

i'm not gonna lie, she was a handful right from the start. stubborn, destructive, hyper-active, and an overall attention whore. she's destroyed a coach, handful of shoes, peed everywhere, run away twice, and scared every single mail man i've ever had.

ex girlfriends have come and gone. i've been in and out of school. i've had jobs and been unemployed. there's been good and bad times. but emma has always been there. smiling her big dumb smile whenever she hears me coming home, whipping her tail around, dancing happily to see me. no matter what.

recently, the lymph nodes under her jaw have become swollen. i took her to the vet this morning only to find out some horrible news. my baby girl has lymphoma cancer. i stared at the vet in disbelief. she is too young. she is only halfway through her life. this is the biggest bunch of bullshit.

i wondered if it is something i did, something i could have done, or something that i shouldn't have done. my mind raced and flew in a million directions. i fought very hard to hold back tears in the vet office, but lost it once i got into my car.

in my rational mind, i understand that she is just an animal. a companion. and that sometimes shitty things happen. but she has been my very best friend for the past 6 years. i remember the first time reading "where the red fern grows" and understanding just how it felt, because when you're a dog person, you just know how those things are.

i wish things were different and feel absolutely powerless. i am angry, sad, and confused. but all is not lost. i have hope. and there is still time. even if it is limited.

gearing up for a big big group show in early 2011. meet some of the players:


Andrew Han - kidgrungybcrafty.blogspot.com



Dion Campbell http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Art-of-Dion-Campbell/263762053577


Hak Lee


and yours truly

big things are coming.

since i've reached an appropriate dating age, i have always almost exclusively dated older girls. the first girl i ever kissed was older. the first girl i was in a relationship with was older. the first girl i ever loved was older. it's nothing i actively pursue or look for in a partner. if anything it's probably not the best idea, as far as the looks department down the line, but that's just me being a superficial jerk.

it's something i've always wondered about, talked about with friends, tried to figure out. maybe it was because i was always young for my age through the k-12 and older girls were the only ones i was exposed to. maybe it's because i think i am "mature" and somehow younger girls don't quite tickle my fancy intellectually. maybe it's because i like a girl who's experienced a little more than me and can put me in my place when i am out of control.

towed

I went to go hang out in the tenderloin last night and ended up having a few drinks with a friend. I ended up sleeping over, failing to note that I had parked my car in a tow away zone. In the morning I walked to Larkin and Bush and immediately I knew that I had been towed. It's the first time that it has ever happened. It was a sinking feeling, like watching your favorite sports team lose to the division rival. It was early as fuck and I was still a little bit drunk so it didn't exactly put a smile on my face.

As I walked across the street to find the number for the tow company, this guy walking past me asks for the time. I look at my phone and tell him " it's 8 o'clock"

"8 o'clock on the dot?"

"No it's actually 7:55"

He throws up his hands in exasperation and goes "that's not 8 is it?"

I am completely thrown off by his comment and immediately blow a fuse. "Why don't you go fuck yourself you piece of shit and find your own goddamn time." I walk away before he gives me more reason to punch him in his precise goddamn face.

I tend to have a pretty short temper along with a bad vindictive streak.

In the 7th grade a kid named John tackled me to the ground and put me in a half nelson to impress some girls.

In the 10th grade a kid named Jimmy punched me in the face in spanish class because i talked shit to him earlier during the day.

In the 11th grade a kid named Andrew hit me in the nuts after he asked me what the capitol of Thailand was.

I still hate these fucking kids and think about what I would do to them if I were to ever bump into them again.

But then again I feel like all this hate and anger is purely self destructive. I call the SFMTA and find out where my car has been towed to, it's about a 2 mile trek south, through the Tenderloin and downtown. On the way I see the guy who asked me for the time. He avoids eye contact with me and keeps going on his way.

I feel like this is probably the way things would go if I ever saw John, or Jimmy, or Andrew. Because so much time has already passed. Because these things matter so little now.

melancholy baby

i've been feeling old lately. maybe old is way too strong a word. just more so like i really have to be an adult by now and that living my boyhood lifestyle for so long has just become recently out of fashion. decisions mean more, because i have already spent so much time living by whim and fleeting fancy. done and seen so many destructive things that maybe it is really time to put it to rest.

i went to a wedding in san diego this past weekend. it was a beautiful ceremony. i knew the groom from childhood and have always regarded him as an older brother figure growing up. it was nice to see how far he had come in life, through all his struggles and endeavors and to end up such a happy and vibrant man, full of life and energy, married to his beautiful wife.

i went through a breakup recently and even that process has changed. we talked things through and i'm not saying it was all rainbows and butterflies, but it was civil. so very much different from the sordid affairs of my past relationships. it felt good, because i know that sometimes these things happen, but at least this time it was a step in the positive direction. that not everything must end horribly.

i'm also not saying that i am exactly a ray of sunshine right now, because break ups suck, but at least i've matured a little bit, even if it is just in my own eyes.

after the wedding i spent the rest of the weekend with an old friend, and we talked about life and love and things inbetween. and it felt good. we walked along the bay and had a late lunch in pb and after that we took a nap and then she made dinner and we had a few bottles of wine. it is nice to know that love sometimes fades, but that it always come back in other forms.

i am a ball of melancholy right now, but i think and remember that i have my health, a loving family, and beautiful and supportive friends (besides steven who thinks i am ugly). that being a little bit more grown up isn't really ever a bad thing.

roadtrip to la

i went into peet's the other day to grab a coffee and bumped into a high school friend, esmond. he was well dressed, fitted polo shirt, designer jeans, clean cut; he stood tall with shoulders back. i could've easily passed him somewhere in the marina or downtown without even recognizing him, consummate young professional.

we chatted for a bit and he told me where he worked and what he did. we reminisced about the past a bit, but he seemed hesitant to relive those memories. he asked me what i had been up to and i told him about a roadtrip i had recently taken down to la.

"how was it?" he asked.

"it wasn't too bad, work trip mostly."

"what for?"

"my friend got hired as production designer for a film so i got to hang out on set for a few days."

"what film?"

"something you'll never hear about, there was no glamour at all, mostly a lot of hard work and lots of arguing amongst the directors and producers. we had to be on set by 6:30 every morning and stayed on set til about 7."

"you didn't get to go out at all?"

"nah, i only saw my friend's apartment and the movie sets. just didn't have time, we were working 12-13 hour days."

we chatted for a little bit longer and promised to keep in touch although those were just said as social niceties.

i thought about how much he had changed over the years, how much we had both changed since we were young. i have taken several roadtrips to la, some good, some bad, but i have never felt an intrinsic connection to the city. driving down south usually meant vacation, debauchery and mayhem, but this last one was so different. i felt so old, so boring, so responsible and grown up.

the trip that i had taken with esmond and another friend mikey years back was memorable, not only because it was our first one, but because back then we had nothing to lose, no money to our names, living with a reckless abandon that we knew so well back then.

i met esmond in high school, tall and gangly for his age, constantly sporting a grimace, piercings, and always looking for a fight. i met mikey through esmond, they were childhood friends, they sold drugs together, got into fights together and lived a hectic gansteresque lifestyle fueled by aggression, alcohol, and korean comraderie. i was merely an accomplice.

we started the trip out on friday morning. i was meeting them up at mikey's house. i remember waking up hungover in a chick's bed. i was not feeling good, but remember being lucky enough to have gotten laid the night before. we got quickly on the road and talked about girls, our dreams, music, but honestly mostly about girls. we were pretty good on the way up besides digging into the herbal medicine bag. we were riding smooth until the 405 intersect off the 5 where we hit gridlock. tempers flared, we were not use to this type of traffic. some guy in a black truck cut us off and we spent the next 30 minutes chasing him through heavy traffic chucking batteries, change, and whatever else we could get or hands on at his car. it took us a record 8 hours to drive from sf to la.

we stayed over at one of mikey's friends apartments in the k town section of la. his friend let us crash in his room for the weekend where he lived with his dad. we probably only saw mikey's friend for about 20 minutes because he was busy playing cupcake face with his girlfriend.

we went to a rave somewhere downtown that night and it was the usual scene. i remember not being too impressed with the whole thing or maybe it just due to the lapse in memory.

on saturday we went down to malibu and hung out around the beach. we met some girls who were also filling up at a gas station and got their numbers. they promised to call us later because they were going to be going to some bars in ktown. it seemed like a good plan to us.

we drove back to k town and went to denny's for dinner. we ordered half the menu and then ditched on the bill. we walked around trying to get an adult to buy us alcohol. we ended up succeeding and started back to mikey's friends apartment with several 40s. some street kids started talking shit to us on the way back, but mikey flashed his baton and we kept on going without getting hassled.

we drank the 40s in the apartment and the girls called us. we met them up at some korean bar. it was my first time in a ktown bar, so i let the koreans do there thing. we had a good time and the girls loosened up a bit and esmond and mikey talked loudly with much machismo and boisterousness. we tried hard but couldn't get the girls to party more unless we drove out to thousand oaks. we said fuck all that noise.

we woke up the next morning to find that mikey's friend's dad had bought us all mcdonald's breakfast and we ate in silence with the tv on some korean news program. the dad wasn't much of a talker, but he probably thought that we were nice boys.

we said our thank yous and good byes, mikey's friend was still at this gf's place so we didn't even see him when we left.

driving back up north wasn't as bad as the drive down. we made signs that read "show us your boobs" and flashed them at any females of discerning taste. we played this game for most of the trip up and were actually able to get two girls to share. we even met them up at a cafe for a late lunch. they were both our age, one was a raver looking girl and the other was an average asian chick. they were nice and interesting, but had questionable judge of character in men.

nothing was accomplished, but we had done so much. i miss those days sometimes.

this summer has crazy and it has zipped by so fast i wish that i could have done more or seen more people. i feel like lately life has been so crammed and hectic that i've lost a little bit of myself. like i don't know what my original life goals were and everything is falling out of order.

and it would be easier just to coast with life. take the easier route. not care. be a child again and do just what i wanted, when and however i want. but things are different now.

i have promised people things. and i must learn to keep those promises. to be serious. to have direction.

life is a crazy mess sometimes.

hola, it's been awhile. here's what i've been working on ya dig.

sometimes i say horrible things to the people i love. i wish i was a better person, friend, brother, son. i look back sometimes and just remember all the lost opportunities and i get so disgusted with myself that it is sometimes hard to get out of bed.

maybe sometimes life is ugly to remind me that contentment is a fleeting thing.

We were just sitting around lounging on a saturday afternoon, me and betty. no makeup on and she was still a lovely creature. i adored her, and it scared me a little bit because i had not felt this way about anyone else in a long while. she had always been hesitant, because of my past and i didn't really blame her much.

i was on the computer shooting out emails when me friend janine IMed me about my friend Chris whom she had met a few weeks prior. i introduced them at a party and they kinda just hit it off, me being the middle man and all.

i met chris in a figure painting class about a year ago. he had a six month vegetation growing on his face and didn't smell fantastic. he loved bukowski, hemingway, and thompson so we were soon close friends.

i met janine at a meeting about a magazine she was trying to start up. she was cute and rambunctious, challenging at every phrase. a rare wit in a sea of dead fish and we soon became good friends.

i should have really figured that the two of them would hit it off because they're so very much alike; dramatics, lovelorn fools just looking for trouble in all the wrong places.

the thing is though that janine has/had this boyfriend, but sometimes love and lust get complicated and things get so sticky and gelatinous that it's all kind of same block of shit in the end.

while i'm sitting there with betty, with the nice summer breeze and lazy afternoon ennui, i tell her how i feel a little bad about what has transpired since i had introduced chris and janine.

"I feel bad that she is cheating on her boyfriend. I feel like it's kind of my fault by letting them meet each other."

"You are a whore."

it wasn't quite the answer i was looking for but it was what she said. it confused me and i felt even worse. like i had done something wrong by having a conscience. i felt bad for janine's boyfriend. i felt bad for chris. i felt bad for janine. and i felt like i had done something horribly wrong on the karma scale.

sometimes i think i let things get a little out of control because i just like things that way. i remember the only time having ever liked Physical Education in the K-12 system was on rainy days in middle school and we would get to play an insane version of dodgeball with like 100 kids. it was like a simulated riot with nerf balls.

i suppose i've always liked chaos. the unknown in every direction, life and death at every situation, or maybe i am just being very much a dramatic fool.

the wallflowers

chris, dennis, and tommy didn't know each other until they went to art school. they were all painters out of the city's academy. sorry fucking loser crop they were. dropouts. kids who didn't make it into any university so mommy and daddy were footing the bill for the private institution downtown. no worries, it's hip to let chicks know that you're a painter, they dug it. so them three clowns, as hip as they could be just played it cool, skipped class, did drugs, and wafted through life. painters, pfft, what a fucking joke.

they posted up at parties and did their thing which was mostly kicking it in the corner. sorry fucking wallflowers. they were the kids that nobody wanted to talk to anyways. think about the kids the drama kids avoided in high school. i'm not saying the retards were cooler, but they weren't far behind.

chris wasn't too bad a painter, but he was too heavy into drugs. he let that shit get a hold of him and he could just never really shake them. once he broke his leg outside of taco bell and sat for 3 months straight on his sofa chewing on barbiturates and opiates of every imaginable manner. his family already has staged four interventions for him, two after they had deadbolted their medicine cabinets.

dennis wasn't too bad a painter, but he was too heavy into women. he let that shit get out of control and every now and again one would catch him in her snare and soon he would be too far gone and heavy into the mess. once he stayed with a girl just because she had threatened suicide and self mutilation, she never even picked up the knife.

tommy wasn't too bad a painter, but he was too heavy into gambling. he let that shit ride too far and he could never stop. it was just too much for a rush for him. one time he spent a week straight in the casino, cleaning himself with a rag and sleeping in the janitors closet.

fuck, everyone's got vices, but for these losers it was getting out of control. their skills diminished, their ambitions halted, their general lust for anything productive seemed to plummet down the drain. they embraced their self-destructive behavior like scavengers to a carcass.

and who the fuck knows what happened to them. they were just mediocre painters anyways, sorry fucking lot they were. it didn't really matter if they made it either way or not because they were all to be bound in obscurity, the thing that any ego centric painter would hate. to know that everything and all that he has done is absolutely and completely meaningless.

but they knew nothing of this while they posted up all cool at the party with their ray ban wayfarers on. not a care in the fucking world.

i've always wanted love that was thick and heavy. clinging to me like butterscotch or salt water taffy. to be enraptured in it, to lose time, and focus, and family, and friends, and maybe even emma, god forbid. i'll admit that i am a hopeless romantic, almost disgustingly so. and don't even start with me now because i've already gotten so much shit about it from my homebois.

i feel like sometimes i'm just out to make myself miserable. that i am just some masochistic fool looking for trouble. but i've always thought that life cannot be complete without a few bumps and bruises. i've never understood people who don't like to gamble a little bit, and even understood less people who don't drink.

i've never trusted happiness because it is such a fleeting thing. being content is for housewives.

i'll be in new york til june 4th.

the lovers

they had met at a tennis club or some other snobby social gathering. jill was young, beautiful, and seductive. she lived for nothing but fleeting whim, but had recently been threatened from being withheld from her trust if she did not settle down and be a good girl. her parents, were of the old world and they did not understand all this independence nonsense.

jack was a nice boy. he was industrious and worked hard at his job. sometimes on the weekends he went out with his friends for a few beers, but never anything too crazy. he was level-headed and had grown complacent with solidarity as he had spent most of his 27 years by himself.

so it was a shock to jack that jill stuck around talking to him that afternoon at the tennis club, even after she had accidentally spilled her cocktail on him. jack of course knew who jill was, because there was no denying her presence.

jill was so versed in the art of love that soon she had little jack wrapped around her fingers. the trust was secured and she could go on living her unproductive, yet pampered life. she kept jack like you would a toy dachshund, clutched tightly to the bosom. but they were good lovers, or at least jack eventually came to be, after the first few dozen tries. jill was content, but she was not satisfied, because she was only playing it safe, and safe was not sexy.

jill eventually grew accustomed to the attention which jack lavished on her and you could even say that she loved him to a certain extent, just as much love that she could muster for anyone but herself. it was different for jack. he loved her completely. but jack was a simple person, what some might even call a fool. because ultimately a girl like jill was merely looking to be entertained. she was like a feather in the breeze, wafting away on any forgone fancy.

and one day she was gone and poor jack was only left with the memories and the remnant smell of her hair on his pillows. she had given him everything he had ever wanted and loved and known. she was a beautiful drug that he could never taste again.

so he hid himself in his little box and vowed to never to come out and play again.

"jack, but aren't you so lonely by yourself?" people would ask.

"no i am busy and i just dont think i could handle a relationship right now"

"jack, but don't you want to find love again?"

"no i found it once and i was fooled"

"jack, but don't you think you're narrow minded?"

"yes, but it is the only way i feel safe" because it was the truth and he never thought that he could go through that bullshit again.

he went on doing his own things, going to work, seeing his friends on the weekends, even going back to the tennis club, but only after he had confirmed that jill was not still a regular. and things went on after that little road bump and he was happy, but never quite the same again. not after that first taste.

it had been horrible coming off it, but it was the most perfect drug. and eventually he would have to test the waters again.

late night rant

things have been super busy lately, but that's good and i feel like i've been hitting my stride; everything has been going accordingly. sometimes i look at the greats and i feel like i haven't done enough in my life or seen enough things. i've always thought it's a healthy shock to realize that i am merely a speck in the universe and no matter what i do it willl be meaningless.

i am happy, but i understand these plateaus come at a cost. I look forward to the next canyon and hopefully by then I'll be so goddamn incoherent that I won't even know who I am talking to.

i've been seeing this girl again and i quite like her. but these feelings stir inside and memories from the past resurface; and i remember that amorous tendencies can lead to comedowns more horrible than any vegas bachelor party. i suppose it's more about control than anything. and fear. and a million other things.

"if two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it" hemingway

"there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy" bukowski

thanks for the heads up guys.

the cab ride

It was a cool saturday spring evening. I had been invited to a few parties and things had been going well in the studio so it was a good excuse to let off some steam. It was old friends over dinner at Delfina than afterwards I was to congregate with some other folks down in little italy for some more late night carousing. Dinner was splendid, although there was an incident with one of the vegetarians in our party over some dish which had meat in it.

It looked very much that Francine, the vegetarian who I had just met that evening, was about to throw up after she realized that her dish had meat in it. Well....no shit. It said so on the damn menu. After that her boyfriend, made quite a fuss and muttered threats of non-payment and disgust. It soured the meal a bit for me, but I was about three pints deep and dinner was over anyways. We paid for dinner and said our goodbyes.

I hailed a cab and stepped inside. I had forgotten all about the vegetarian incident and was a bit sociable from the booze. The cabbie looked middle eastern, but if you were to ask me to pinpoint, i would have had better luck throwing a dart at a map. he was in his 40s, with a beard, stout, but seemed approachable.

"How's your night going?"

"Good, it is my daughter's birthday" he answered with a gleam.

"That's terrific, I wish her a happy birthday. You just get on your shift or about to get off?"

"Oh, I just got on. We already did the birthday."

He then went to on to explain to me in great detail about the party, the cake, his daughter's dress, and what he had gotten her. And throughout his description his face was alight and it made me happy listening to him. I didnt' say anything afterwards, but there was a warmness that inhabited the cab.

"Yeah, it's not the best to work at night, but it definitely brings in more money. And it's all for my family, so it's worth it in the end."

I usually have a bad habit about asking cabbies what their "worst rides"ever was and usually it's something about some drunk being too drunk and throwing up in the cab. So I thought nothing of it and went ahead and asked, thinking at least I would be entertained.

The cabbie went silent for minute which at the time I had mistaken for contemplation.

"It was about a year ago, a man got into my cab in the soma. He looked like he was in very big trouble. He didn't tell me to go anywhere, just told me to keep driving around. He was nervous, looked like he hadn't slept for days. When I asked him where he wanted me to take him, he only said keep driving."

There was another silence, but this time the cabbie was giving it for dramatic effect, he knew exactly what was going to happen next.

"Then out of no where he says that there were two men at his house trying to kill him."

"What were they trying to kill him for?"

"He hired them."

"Why would anyone do something like that?"

"He said he went into his bar one day and he knew some guys there. he got really drunk and he hired these guys to kill him."

I thought about Hemingway's short story "the killers". Then I thought about what a fool-hardy, cop out way that was to kill yourself, but still above stopping traffic by pretending to jump off the bay bridge during traffic hours.

"So what'd he do?"

"Well we just kept driving around for about three hours. At the end he handed me about $300 and I dropped him off at Harrison and 7th, right under the overpass. I asked him if he wanted help, maybe we could go to the cops or something, but he didn't want help. He just got out of the cab and walked off. I checked the newspapers for the next few days, but I saw nothing."

It was a quiet ride after that. He dropped me off at columbus and broadway and i bid him a good night. I had lost my buzz by then and knew a little bit how Francine had felt earlier.

let there be blood

it feels like lately i have been growing complacent, like the hunger is gone. the bloodlust and anger have subsided in the last few years and sometimes i don't even know if i am myself. but fuck all that, it's time for some carnage.

best friends

when i was young i remember i had a best friend named greg. i had just come to america so communication was hard, but most friendships are based on activities and shared interests, so
talking isn't always necessary. his mom picked me up after elementary school sometimes and even taught me the alphabets. he was my only friend for a long time since i couldn't speak to any of the other kids and when i look back i thank him for that because without him i would have been alone.

greg and i spent many afternoons together, playing video games, watching movies, exploring the outdoor expanse of his backyard. one summer we really got into mountain biking, the next he introduced me to footbll. somehow when i went to go visit him, i felt that my life was much more incomplete. his dad was a gadget junkie so his house was always furnished with newest toys, nestled cozily into the modern decor picked out by his stay at home mom. they always ate dinner together at the table, while their yellow lab, casey, begged imploringly with her doggie eyez.

at my house, it was me, my brother, my mom, and grandparents. pops was back in taiwan getting his grind on, and it was anything, but a typical american household. i remember wishing that my family were more like greg's, americanized, modern, normal.

greg was my portal to american culture since at my home, only mandarin and taiwanese were spoken, while my grandparents held stringent ties to the taiwanese green indepedent party. i remember wishing that i didn't have to miss weekend morning cartoons due to chinese school and church.

me and greg's were both made to learn piano during the 1st grade and i ended staying with it through junior year of high school, although at the end I could hardly stand it anymore. my mom even started making me play for her church on sundays and i began to feel very much like a highly trained show dog.

me and greg were pretty much best friends through all of grade school up through middle school and as a kid you don't realize that sometimes interests change and that friendships don't last forever. i remember during the '89 earthquake i was still in kindergarten and all of like 4 kids showed up for school the next day. it mostly kids with hard ass asian parents, and also oscar, but oscar was that kid who liked to eat his boogers and elmer's white paste so i didn't really hang out with him much. i remember wondering why greg didn't show up for school and i knew then that we were from different worlds.

we developed different interests through middle school and the only things we really had in common anymore was the advance math class at school and piano on wednesdays. i started playing little league baseball, while he joined the ultimate club.

i don't know what happened in high school. i tried to be good, tried to fulfill my filial duty, but something inside snapped and i just really didn't want to be a good little boy anymore. greg kept doing his thing, excelling at school, formed a garage band, won merit awards and national recognition. i began experimenting with drugs, sex, hung out with the wrong crowd and basically tried very hard to get into trouble, but never quite trying hard enough.

i still did pretty well in school, because to me high school was very much a joke. i cheated just enough in the classes that i hated to get by and thought that i could get by okay with sitting in cruise control through life. this ideology continued throughout college, a debilitating conceit, complemented with bouts of alcoholism and drug abuse.

me and greg stopped being friends in high school, but i think that is mostly due to my own proficiencies as a bridge burner. he has since continued to be a good, nice boy, graduating from a nice school, getting a nice job, finding a nice girlfriend, and buying a nice safe condo. but i suppose that is one of the many reasons that we stopped being friends in the first place.

sometimes doubt creeps into my head and i wish that i had lived that life and continued to be a nice boy. but fuck that asshole doubt.

maybe sometimes friendships are only made in times of circumstance and situation. maybe sometimes friendships are only made for proximity and necessity. maybe all things in life are only meant to be temporal.

wednesday beers

during the summer i would always go to the 21st amendment for lunch because the weather was extremely pleasant and they have tasty beers and it is nice to paint in the early afternoon with a slight buzz going. there was a cute redhead in my class who was always pretty curt to everyone, but she was really nice to look at, so the flaw seemed to be a little less harsh. she started showing up to the bar on wednesday's and we had our little routine going. we would be pretty distant and reticent in class, but we were wednesday beer buddies during lunch.

she was an avid boxer at her local gym where she had met her husband who she was living with now. she had wicked talent in the studio and i always looked forward to lunch with her because she was like no one i had ever met before. she had grown up in a little town of nevada, with 7 brother and sisters, strictly mormon. i had grown up with mormons in the k-12 system, but i had never befriended one.

I had talked to several of my friends and they insisted that pursuing a married chick was out of bounds like big time so I cooled the jets off that mess and just kept it in the friend zone. I learned that she was going to introduce her husband to her family for the first time over christmas break. she seemed pretty anxious about the whole ordeal.

we talked about art and our lives and where we wanted to take all this mess, but mostly i liked to look at her pretty face. we talked about maybe doing shows together in the future and all that. i remember right before finals she got a huge cut on her brow from an amateur bout and i thought it was pretty sexy an all. we traded information and then finals came and i hopped straight out to thailand so we really didn't get a chance to say bye, but i figured she would always be at the 21st next semester because that was just the way things were going to be.

i remember receiving an email from an event coordinator about possibly curating a show in early february while i was on vacation in thailand. i emailed the redhead from class but never got a reply back. the show came and went and school started and i've been back to the 21st, but i have not seen her since. i suppose that maybe most likely she just couldn't afford to go to school anymore and probably had to take up a job somewhere to support her beer habit. but the way i like to look at things, she probably got shamed into divorcing her husband when she went back to nevada because he wasn't a mormon and is now living in a little town back home wishing that she could have beers at the 21st with me on wednesday so we could bullshit about where we could see the future taking us.

art dump

so i was thinking yesterday and it's about two years since i started on this art journey and it's been both good and bad times. all i know is it takes more than boyish good looks, charm, and general badassery to make it big in the art world.

i want to do a big solo show and destroy the space and hang up dirty pictures that people will probably sneer at, but it's okay because i'll probably be drunk at the opening. i've been trying to get in contact with gallery people, but my strong suits aren't within the realm of verbal negotiation. i'm trying though.

until that big break through, i'm gonna keep chugging along.

if you know of a big wall space that needs to be destroyed, i will do it for freezy as long as you follow these rules.

1. i will not paint on large plywood nailed to the wall, because then you are just asking for free shit and that is just not going to happen unless you are a hot chick.

2. give me lunch

lil weezy and friends in progress

yaager in water color

young lady with handgun oils

killer mixed media

liana water color

you know what it's about.

nick: dude, her vagina looks too much like meat curtains.

me: you think?

nick: yeah it doesn't look as appetizing.

going big at auto logic san bruno

N.K.F x d.chen

trip mao shocker for your mother fucking ass

nicola helping hang and sippin brew at the fatal attraction show

do the damn thing.

live painting for the first time.

dog fight.

As i was driving home yesterday all i could think about was veggin out for a little bit and procrastinating on all the shit i had to do for the upcoming week. rounding the last right up to my street i see two dogs in stride trotting up to my house. they must smell emma because they stop at my front yard and smell about. i pull up on my driveway and step out. one looks like a mastiff/boxer mix while the second one looks like a rottweiler/german shepard. They are both males with collars on. i walk up to the rott, which barks and walks away, the mastiff is friendly and lets me handle it no problem. his collar has no tags which means i can't call the owner.

the mastiff is friendly and is under voice command. in hindsight i should have gone inside and grabbed leashes from inside so i could have controlled the dogs better. i let them both go so i can get my phone out of my car and see my neighbor johnny coming up the block with his snow white pomeranian mix on a walk yapping loudly ferociously at the two strays.

"hey, you ever seen these dogs before?" i call out to him as he makes his way towards me.

"nah, you just spot them outside?"

"yeah"

suddenly as johnny approaches i see the two stray dogs stop, focus, and attack. my friend johnny's eye's go wide with fear and out of no where is as flurry of teeth, snarls, fur, growls, and cries. johnny is yelling madly, frenzied with rage, his body a blur of kicks and fists. the pomeranian is on his back, yelping with the fear of death and i was pretty sure that we had a dead dog on our hands as i ran up to the scene. i manage to grab a hold of both collars and drag the fight apart.

johnny is overcome with rage and a torn knee hole on his pair of jeans and runs up to the dogs and "yells i'll fucking kill you" as he squares up to kick one of the dogs in the face while i yell out "no it's cool, i've got them" and he slows and calms down and goes back to his shrieking dog. the rott starts to lunge on his collar and it snaps at the buckle and he goes right for the pomeranian and the dogs and johnny go yelling down the block.

i just stand where i am with the mastiff in one hand and the broken dog leash in the other and think that if the pomeranian hadn't died or escaped terrible injury the first time, this had to be it, and i felt a little bad for johnny who was just on a nice stroll with his lap dog and now it might be dead.

after awhile, the shrieking form the pomeranian stops so i yell out to johnny "is your dog okay?" and he yells back "no!" he is on the phone describing the situation to what i assume is the cops. as i am walking up to the johnny's house with the mastiff in hand i see another gentlemen approaching, he is wearing a balack hoody and work boots, with a goatee. he grabs the rott and uses his belt as a makeshift leash.

i walk up to him and ask if these are his dogs and he says yes. he then goes on to tell me how the pg&e guy opened the side gate and the dogs ran loose and all that and i am glad to be able to walk away from the situation. i check up on the pomeranian cowering on johnny's stoop. besides a damp mat of fur around the jugular, there is absolutely wrong with the dog. no lesions, fractures, punctures, nothing. it is not hurt at all.

the cops come and they do the whole trading of information business and i get to walk away from all of that. i thought about how i quite liked the mastiff and that maybe after another year or so i could finally get a second dog. also i thought about how much i dislike most little dogs because their owners are horrible dog owners and do not properly socialize and train their pets.

barbituventure

this one time i was in Thailand i had the unfortunate or awesome occurrence of finding out that every pharmacy has every imaginable prescription drug out in the market. i was out in chiang mai with nick after a few days carousing out in Bangkok and things had been going pretty well and it was pretty much a night to night alcohol diet. we met up with an ex-pat, tommy, i knew back from in the states who decided to move to thailand to learn some kickboxing the hard way.

he brought this chick named ally from australia out with him and she had a cute accent and ended hooking up with me for the rest of my vacation which was nice, but back to the barbituates.

our little party of four had just finished up a nice thai lunch fueled with lots of beer in the humid heat of the winter sun and tommy dropped casually that "all pharmacies are stocked with anything you want man, no prescriptions needed, just cash" and that was that. i was on soma break for the rest of the trip. anxiety? pill. stress? pill. ennui? pill. anxiety, is that you again? pill. it was an unending cycle which didn't quit til i had to leave the country and boy can i tell you the nightmares i had during withdrawals alone aren't worth me ever going on a binge again, at least not for awhile.

it was during one of these euphoric wavy daze that me and nick decided it was a good idea to rent scooters to travel around town. we rode up and down zipping through the busy streets, faster than everyone. it was like bombing a hill during 2pm traffic in the tahoe mountains, gunning the throttles, always faster in and out of the lead until i low sided at an intersection and thank god i didn't get run over and i was wearing that bike helmet they gave us at the scooter place.

I remember rolling twice with my backpack on and that probably saved a lot of skin off my back and i left the accident with little incident besides some scraped up elbows and knees and even the camera i just bought had survived the accident without incident. after the wreck i stood up and checked the joints and made my side to the side of the road where there happened to be a bar with a bunch of middle aged ex pats and a horde of concerned looking thai ladies who happened all to be working at the same bar.

i checked myself again and i couldn't believe that i was okay and by then nick had hauled and parked the scooter next to me and i ran to a local pharmacy to pick up some bandages and antiseptic since the last thing i wanted was gangrene on vacation.

we rode around some more after that, but i had had enough and the pills in the supply sack were running low so i wanted to get back to the hotel as soon as possible. i knocked on my hotel room after parking the scooter and went up to the room where ally from australia answered the door and asked me what had happened and i told her and then she laughed in my face and i always thought that was kind of a dick thing to do.

it happened to be a pretty okay night though because we kept buying beers from the liqour store next door and ally from australia kept going on food runs so that night didn't turn out to bad. and it didn't hurt either that i got woken up with the next morning either but i am sure it was more sympathy than anything but it kind of absolved the whole laughing in my face thing.

the barbituventure was fun, but once again those nightmares were bad and i couldn't sleep for like 3 nights straight without waking to some terrible trepidation swearing that all the fears, anxieties, and ghosts hadn't caught up back to me after all this time.

my father's chauffeur

my father used to have a chauffeur, years back. i don't really know why, because he could have driven himself and does so perfectly well now. i think part of the reason was because his driver was a college buddy. the driver's name was "ah-long" or as a literal translation uncle dragon and he was just this cool, chain-smoking, whiskey drinking, golf hustler who'd hit a few bad streaks.

ah-long was the type of uncle to give you cigarettes and sneak you drinks when you're 16 and stuck at a lame adult party. he gave me pointers on my golf game and once even gave me a few cubans he had somehow procured. since him and my dad were friends, they went everywhere together. during long rides i heard them debate life, politics, and everything in between except women, at least never in front of me.

my parents always spoke highly of him. he had been popular back and college and been lucky with a few small businesses but things changed and he had to start driving for my dad. he was always smiling his nicotine stained yellows and was always with a quick "good morning" or "how are you today". i would probably only see him once a year, just the number of times i went back to taiwan to see the family. every year, i would go back and my dad would tell me that he would have to let ah-long go. but he never did. at least not until a few years ago.

"dad, where's ah long?"

"he stopped working for me a few months ago."

"how come?"

"just because, that's how things work out."

"how is he?"

"who?"

"ah-long"

he paused for a while. sometimes i can still never tell if my father is in deep contemplation or an unengaged stupor.

"he's not doing so well. his son recently had an accident. he was on his scooter and was hit by a utility truck, they had to amputate both his legs after unsuccessfully trying to save them. his girlfriend at the time was also on the scooter, but luckily she survived the ordeal with little injury."

"is his son okay now?"

"he's recovering."

"what about ah-long?"

"he's dealing with it."

i haven't seen ah-long since he stopped driving for my dad but every once in awhile i'll ask about him and how he's doing. he's one of those people that kind of just fade out of your life, yet leaving a tremendour impression. my dad recently told me that ah-long has just found a new job. he's managing a manufacturing plant in the steel industry. his son isn't doing too bad either, he recently got into law school and is engaged. sometimes, things work out okay.