Jhouetta

foot on the gas

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:15:47 -0800

I really wish I had a car on nights like these (or even a driver's licence that's not out of state and expired). Nights where I am restless, having too many thoughts rattling around in my head or too much caffeine coursing through my veins to let me go about my usual course of business or pleasure. I miss being able to hop in and go on a solo drive late at night, turn the volume up on some mellow contemplation-inducing tunes and drive a little too fast on H3, or winding down the coast by Sandy's beach, or through the pineapple fields and countryside of the north shore with my arm out the open window, carving invisible ribbons through the air with my dancing hand. I'd think about my wonderful, messy, life and all the people who make it so. I'd think about where I've been, where I am, and where I'd like to go. 2009 is another year that has come and gone. This past year has witnessed exploration, dependence, independence, love, loss, friendship, depression, growth, maturity, and elation. During this year, I have really come to love this island, embracing the shortcomings like I would love the scars and imperfections on a loved one's body. Tenderly running my fingers over them, memorizing them, and even finding comfort in them. Hawaii and I are alike in this way. We are specialized and quirky, we are not for most people. Horribly beautiful, impossibly flawed, complicated in some ways, and sublimely simple in others. Even the dirt is different here. The land is alive, blood coursing through it making it a saturated and vivid rusty red. Place your ear on the ground and hear the heartbeat of Pele. For the first 6 months of living here, I only imagined myself staying in Hawaii for a few years and then moving on to another more permanent location. But I'm laying down roots, making myself a place I can finally call home. I want someone to come visit me, I want to show off my home. I want to show the beautiful beaches, the mix of people, the terrain, the culture. Show them the high surf and surfers on the north shore, and take them sky diving with the chill guy who jumps without shoes on. Swing 'round gritty Chinatown for a night out in the artsy bars and clubs, where the smell of piss permeates the air and they can see a coagulation of asian people, meth heads/bums, and hipsters. Go on a stroll with them down the strip to shop at places we can't afford, and point out the street and performance artists who chat me up on a regular business day. Make them eat so much local and asian fare they'll want to puke their guts out for a week after they get home. I know people will visit eventually, but sometimes I get so impatient. Anyway, I think 2010 has some memorable things in store for me. Some are planned, others will surely surprise me and take me off my guard. We'll see them unfold as the year progresses. Thank you 2009. And cheers to you, 2010.

zzzzzzzz

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:46:38 -0800

Lately I've had some similar dreams. It's nearly always about relationships and sex, and it's always the same guy. The weird thing is the guy is not my usual dating type--he's tall, thin, gangly, white, big nose, thick black Buddy Holly-type glasses, dark mysterious eyes. The dark eyes thing is something I typically go for, but the other things? Not so much. It's kind of bizarre. Since they started, I've found my eyes searching the faces and profiles of strangers, finding the shape of his lips here, the body curvature and posture there. It's like I'm waiting for the guy to magically manifest in my real life. It's time for bed now. I don't know his name, but I'm sure I'll enjoy him anyway. Ha!

.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:33:00 -0800

You know, it's really a terrible feeling when you're sad, but you cannot explain the reasons for your sadness to the people around you. Not that they can't be put into words, but that I am not willing to give the answers. In order to avoid the questions, I feel like I have to try hard and pretend that I feel absolutely normal and happy. And it's a farce, a false show of pseudo-bravery that compounds the emotions, and becomes a sort of toxin that needs to be bled but has no outlet to loose it. The death of an idea, the departure of a dream, the passing of possibility--sometimes the things you must bury and mourn are things that were never corporeal. And it's painful in it's own right. I need to immerse myself in something. For tonight I'll start with something trivial like the movie Up. At least then I can blame the crying on the story (which surely will be half true, I did cry like a baby when I saw it in theatres... I really am getting soft at my old age). Creative nonsense to come later.

a road worth traveling.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:50:41 -0800

a road worth traveling.

You & I

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:26:45 -0800

so damn good.

from the depths of Wolf River

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:59:51 -0800

Hello there. It's nice to see you here again. You're a human being, maybe you'll know what I'm talking about. It's late at night and a feeling overcomes you, a feeling where every day life becomes cloying and wears on you like you've got on a suit made of bowling balls, and the only thing you can do is turn on some amazingly heartfelt, somewhat depressing, music and ride the wave out until you're drooling on your pillow and dreaming crazy things of being drafted into the military and finding out that your high school Spanish teacher is in your barracks and Richard Simmons is your drill instructor... do you get like that? I used to get like that frequently, nowadays I only get it occasionally. Tonight is one of those nights, and Jeff Buckley is the one who is keeping me company. It's insane, I'm listening to one of his songs and I can actually feel an aching love for this girl who is "burning holes with eyes of liquid brown." How does he do that? How can a man who has long since breathed his last breath before succumbing to his cool watery grave make some random girl in Honolulu who is up past her bedtime, feel like she is burning for some brown-eyed girl when said girl isn't even bi-curious? You know what I think? I think good musicians are super heroes. Fuck you Spiderman, you're nothing in comparison to Jeff Buckley, and Thom Yorke, and John Lennon. My super heroes do not have to wear showy costumes and capes. They have calloused fingers, don crumpled slept-in t-shirts and jeans from long hours on the tour bus, and wear that face disfiguring pain/pleasure expression whenever they are creating/performing music. I salute you, super heroes of my world. Here's to many more cozy late nights between you and I.

so tired of all the creepy creepers who have seemed to saturate Honolulu as...

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:25:25 -0800

so tired of all the creepy creepers who have seemed to saturate Honolulu as of late.

the movers and shakers

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:01:56 -0800

Today I found myself falling for an unfamiliar, but charming, corner of Hawaii I've known about but have never explored. Just when I thought I was going to be swallowed by the undertow of the consumerist driven cement tourist block that is Waikiki, I find that I am spared. The hours since then I've felt a weird electric pulse, my body is like a live wire. It has ignited a sort of restlessness--a need for adventures, a need for abandon, a need to explore, a need for creativity. It was a cool splash of water to the face, awaking me from the sleepy safety of daily doldrums. It gave me a conscious sense of life--of being alive. It did not come about in an overt and crazy in-your-face way, but woke me up in a quiet dignified way. Rich tastes, slow smiles, saturated colors--a feeling of timelessness. I'm making plans. I'm making some moves. Who's in?

huzzah

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:48:18 -0800

Sometimes happenstance is the best. The last 16 hours have been surreal, any moment a tableau.

gearing up for 2010

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:44:23 -0800

I am determined to be happy, and I am. It's amazing how well that works. Trying to be more proactive in making the quality of my life better. Seeing New Moon the day after it comes out, reading a new book, trying to make new friends and "put myself out there" more, and have a little travel excursion planned in the new year. How is you? Faye Wong is awesome in Chungking-Express.

irrational nostalgia

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:52:30 -0700

R.E.M. is drifting into my room, and has triggered a senseless sadness. Tears are streaming down my face. It brought back those few years of painful childhood where I felt so horribly alone. I would lay in bed and listen to my dad's R.E.M. cd and cry. My childhood was largely very lonely, up until the teen years. Anyway, my days here are limited. I will be writing from a different location this time next week.

swimming with black-eyed angels.

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:34:44 -0700

swimming with black-eyed angels.

Dreaming Pyramid Song again

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:33:06 -0700

I jumped in the river and what did I see? Black-eyed angels swam with me A moon full of stars and astral cars All the things I used to see All my lovers were there with me All my past and futures And we all went to heaven in a little row boat There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt I jumped into the river Black-eyed angels swam with me A moon full of stars and astral cars And all the things I used to see All my lovers were there with me All my past and futures And we all went to heaven in a little row boat There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt -Radiohead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2VzLn6DMCE

Fin.

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:22:13 -0700

"For what it's worth, I think happiness is a fleeting condition, not a permanent goddamn state of mind. I've learned that if you chase after moments of bliss here and there, sometimes those moments will sustain you through the shit." He paused to pick a piece of tobacco off his tongue. "Personally, I don't like inherently happy people. I don't trust them. I think there's something seriously wrong with anyone who isn't at least a little let down by the world."

.

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:35:00 -0700

Killing love with love Snuffed in a hormonal red blaze of glory. Only Bokonon can help me now.

omg, want.

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:09:58 -0700

http://www.pinupgirlclothing.com/vintage-dress-full-circle-skirt.html

retroactive imagination

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:18:14 -0700

"We knew the pain of winter wind rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuritating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt so compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were. We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colours went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them." Yup, I watched The Virgin Suicides for the millionth time tonight. My head is a little odd. When I watch films or read books that take place in previous decades and eras, I get weirdly wistful. I feel this sort of bizarre nostalgia for things I've never lived or seen. Things I have never, and will never, experience. Maybe it's because my mind is a mess of shimmering over-exposed Polaroids, encapsulated in bubbles that smell faintly of leather, fresh cut grass, and old tobacco smoke (with a fair amount of keen-edged spikes of cynicism to burst many of said bubbles). And despite the fact that my rosy retro notions might be way off the mark, I still feel like I've missed something by not living in an earlier time. I'm primarily thinking of the 1700-1980 timespan. I want to know first-hand what it was like to live without our current technologies, to embrace technologies, philosophies, and lifestyles of previous cultures. Don't get me wrong, I like having laptops and modern medicine. It's just that sometimes with all our advances and technologies, with all the convenience that's available to your average westerner this day and age, I feel like we may have lost some part of our humanity. Our life expectancy is higher than it's ever been, but I feel like it's also something people take for granted. They expect, and almost feel entitled to, a long life. We live longer, but do we live fuller lives? People in previous times couldn't take long lives for granted. Did the average person carpe diem and live a more actively rich life because death was always swaying so closely over their head? I haven't witnessed that, and I will never experience those things. And for some reason, that breaks my heart a little.

palpitations

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:36:53 -0700

I am hyper aware of my heart tonight. It beats--thump, thump, thump--a frighteningly steady march. And it sounds strangely like the ticking of a time bomb.

the answer is unclear, please try again.

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:48:38 -0700

I feel like if fortune telling and seeing the future were possible anywhere on planet earth, it would be at the laundrymat. When I lived in 1129, I spent one night a week listening to shoegaze on my ipod and staring half-focused at the waltzing colors and swimming fabrics through the window of a front-loading washer. And during this time, I would become entranced by the swirly mud of music and the herky-jerky dancing between the t-shirts and underwear. At the time I felt that if I were less obtuse and more clairvoyant, some mystery of the universe might reveal itself to me. Or maybe not something quite that important in the grand scheme of things, but something that would be key to my (mostly) inconsequential life. Anyway, if I were an artist I'd make a live art installation involving a front-loading washer machine with a window and fill it with clothing and interesting objects in beautiful vivid colors and made from various textures, fabrics, and materials. Put in some plastic fruit in hues that are surreal, swaths of gauzy ghost-like fabrics in neutral colors, legos and legomen, and a hand full of silver glitter. I'm not sure what the piece should be called. Weird? Absurd? Probably.

Boredom leads to pseudo-creativity on the interwebz

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:07:45 -0700

Train Romance by durga1984 featuring Diesel boots