resolutions

sometimes when you wish for things, you should really think them through. i was never really a new years resolutions person because i think it's dumb. why would you care only one time out of the year for self-improvement? resolutions that piss me off in no particular order:

1. losing weight - if you've got to commit to losing weight only on new year's, just stop. you're fat. either throw up after meals or just be happy being a fatty.

2. religion - this is an umbrella group for all institutionalized religions and how the individual wants to be closer to god/allah/the spaghetti monster, whatever. you're stupid and nobody cares.

3. being nicer to people - you're an idiot, no one likes you.

4. trying harder at work - just sit in your cubicle and much on your cheeto's. either start sucking your boss' dick or doing it better.

5. finding a significant other - you're either ugly or a horrible person to be around. be happy dying alone.

my new year's resolution was to get into more fist fights. right, probably 100 times dumber than all 5 resolutions i put together. i just thought i needed to spice things up and live a little dirtier. i was going pretty good up until 3 weeks ago when i caught a knee to the face resulting in a concussion, black eye, fractured right orbital lobe, fuzzy vision, dizziness, and my favorite, spitting out blood.

i was going pretty good before that with 2 knockouts, 1 no contest, and 1 draw.

lesson learned: never make a new year's resolution ever again.

i went to boston right after getting my face broken to meet up with a college friend and his gf. it was my first trip with a significant other. thank god my gf was there because the first night i got black out drunk on jamieson and threw up from the lobby, the elevator, down the hallway, and in my room. i woke up feeling like twice baked shit and no recollection of what happened. suffice to say, i am a pretty top notch boyfriend.

i've also been helping out on the mural at o'farrell street theatre for my buddy and teacher john wentz www.wentzart.net. if you don't know, the o'farrell theatre is a hardcore strip club, featuring some of the finest talent that northern california has to offer, including, but not limited multi-girl dildo shows. top notch stuff.

my art has been going well, i've done several collaborations with fellow artist and bad ass hak lee. there are more to come in addition to a few videos in the works. we're trying to do a show sometime this summer, but my manager says my artist statements sucks and that i'm about as entertaining as a big girl eating ice cream on a hot day, but maybe you're into that kind of thing.

love and keeses

d.chen

making sure there's no permament damage to my vision.

sitting at the ER, spitting up blood and missing my friend's birthday dinner at some swank steak house.

o'farrell street mural

hawt stuff

boston streets

hak x d.chen 2011

brokeface

it was two days ago, tuesday afternoon and i was having drinks with my art friend chris. shot and a beer for $5, and we were throwing them back fast. chris has been my best art friend since the beginning. a very crazy character to say the least, his lifestyle makes mine look like an accountants. he was having a helluva tough day as he was coming down from the acid he took the previous night. we talked about the things that we normally talked about over several drinks:work, art, and girls.

we end up making our way over to my girlfriend's apartment to meet up with her and one of her friends and continue having drinks and conversation. nothing out of the ordinary. chris has always tends to be a bit of a belligerent drunk, he has told me on several occasions that his own family has held several interventions for him, obviously to no avail.

out of no where, he starts play jabbing me, which is nothing out of the ordinary, but the next thing i know he gets me in a clinch behind my head and throws a knee at my face. my vision explodes in a flash of white and it feels like my right eyeball explodes. i drop to my knees and clutch my face in pain, tears welling up.

"what the fuck man."

"oh shit sorry dude."

"fuck"

"shit, i'm sorry man, you alright?"

"no fuck, you just kneed me in the fucking face."

i try to open my eyes, but everything is a blur. coupled with the vision loss is probably a minor concussion, but i am too drunk myself at this point to notice. he apologizes like mad, but i just tell him to forget about it and leave. my girlfriend is in a little bit of a frenzy and keeps wanting me to go to the hospital, but i reassure her that nothing seems to be broken and that i'll just wake up tomorrow morning with raccoon eyes.

i wake up in the morning with no black eye, but have a slight double vision, and a pounding headache. everytime i hack/cough up, there is blood in my mucus. i am not happy. i reassure myself and my girlfriend that i'm okay, but we both can tell the hesitancy in my voice. i drop her off at school and drive myself back home, feeling a bit nauseated. i call my primary doctor, but he isn't in. the receptionist says that she'll page him with my number.

i take a nap and wake up sometime in the early afternoon feeling a bit better. my only major concern is my vision, but that seems to be fine, it just feels like my eyeball has been hit with a hammer. my doctor finally calls back at some time around 4 and i explain the situation to him and he says that i should immediately go to the ER, one of my least favorite places in the world.

now don't get me wrong, i have always lived by the motto that boys will be boys, but i have never inflicted pain on someone who doesn't deserve it, especially my friends.

long story short, the doctor gives me a CAT scan and says that i fractured my right orbital socket. upon looking at the scan, he also tells me that the left side has also been fractured before and that my nose looks like it has been broken a couple of times, but there's nothing we can do about that now. i wait several hours for two more specialists to come in and look things over. they say what the first doctor says. i am not happy.

i sitting at the computer now after taking my fifth percocet of the day, and still hacking a bit of blood from my busted ass sinuses. i am not happy. i keep thinking about why chris would do something like that. it's not like i haven't told him on several occasions that friends don't fight friends, but the messages seemed to have been lost on him, just like his families interventions.

i have known him for quite some time. i consider him a friend, but do not see how things can ever be the same after something like this. maybe no matter how much of a friend you are to someone and how much you try to help, there is just no getting through to them, unless they want to help themselves.

long time no sea

i haven't posted since 10, sometimes love does crazy things to you. i was in taiwan for a few weeks. getting my drink on, seeing family, having a relatively good time. a few days after christmas i went to a local english pub in kaohsiung, taiwan after going out to dinner with my parents and some of their friends. i was buzzed, but hadn't spoken english in about 2 weeks and needed to banter. long story short, i pissed off an english fella who thought i was getting a little boisterous, so he tells me to step outside and make in fisiticuffs. i knock him on his old man ass (50-55) and him ask him if "that's that". His wife comes running out of the bar screaming for me to stop.

"stop, don't hit him anymore"

"he threw a punch at me first"

"please stop, i own the bar, he's is my husband."

oh shit. i don't know what to think so i apologize profusely, she apologizes back. she offers to buy me a drink. he apologizes again for her husband being so drunk. i apologize for knocking her husband on his monkey ass.

i don't really feel like going back to the bar in fear of some sort of retribution.

she apologizes and tells one of the bartenders to pour me a drink. i apologize to the old man and offer him my hand. he mutters something and takes my hand. she gives me a shot. i cheers the old man and take the shot. i black out.

i wake up in my bed. thank god. at least i still have my left hook.

besides that i got to visit my uncle who is the director of the national taiwan hospital of psychiatry. it was pretty surreal. i always knew my uncle was a pretty smart dude and was a psychiatrist and all, but this was some next level shit. i got to visit the entire hospital, from the minor crazies, to the crazy as shit crazy, all the while having them see me uncle and bow and say "good morning director". i kept on thinking of how crappy it was that all these crazies were locked up and couldn't go anywhere they wanted at their hearts desire and i told me uncle this and he said that the hospital was mostly voluntary, except for the violent ones and i felt a little better after that. but, my brain got started working again, and i got all paranoid that one of these sons of bitches would try to stab me with a pen, so i kept my wits about me.

happy to say the tour went without incident, except a lot of patients greeting my uncle. when we got to the freudian library, i asked my uncle if he knew that freud was a fan columbian sugar. he looked at me with a frantic concern, and seemed a little bit flustered, but it could just be that it is because he is so adverse to any sort of recreational drug.

after i came back from taiwan to beautiful rainy sf i had a show at goforaloop gallery. it went splendidly and i got to see a lot of beautiful faces. good thing came out of the show and i am happy to announce that i will be doing a two man show with one of the artists, hak lee, coming to you summer of 2011.

as of late i am spending many afternoons of ennui with my beautiful girlfriend, and making sweet sweet love to plenty of canvasses and vice versa. life is good, i am getting grind on and i will or update photos tomorrow, or next week. love love love daniel.

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.