Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar
ok, so i have gotten some criticisms from my faithful readers that my blog entries are tooo long. well, let's just say this. as far as i can accommodate my "public", i'll try to be as succint as possible. but i've got to say that sometimes this blog is less about "reporting" my life and more about trying to "understand" my life, from my own perspective...and only that, unless i am making the effort to pretend to be someone else. ultimately, you my beloved reader, have to realize that here in this blog, is a space in my life where i CAN be completely self-absorbed. in real life, such self-concern is quite a faux-pas and against my southern raised sense of courtesy and modesty. so if you are like...so over... reading about my self-absorbment... feel free to just skim the entry. or simply choose not to read it. i won't be offended trust me. but i do hope that in the verbosity, maybe you'll pick up some kernels of insight, causing you to sit back, and think... man, i know what the fuck he's talking about... and yeah, that some serious shit. just pretend your one of the 49 gold rushers... you got to pan through lots of schlop to find them nuggets. and i have no intention on submitting these tales for the nobel.
.
that said, a "quick" note about my fun evening. i went to a "cigar bar" with chris this evening. it was a first one for me, that is smoking a cigar. really no joke, well... there was that one time in college where i tried to smoke one of those silly flavored cigarillos you buy at 7 eleven, but i am sure that doesn't really count. anyways, after some finagling, i got the hang of it although i still am no connosuer or expert at smoke rings. it' sort of like smoking a cigarette for over an hour, without inhaling. the whole "huffing" part i had to get use to, at first i thought i was sucking on a baby bottle... you know that whole pursed lips bop bop bop action. but it was good eventually. i can't really say the cigar itself was all... THAT. i mean, it was fine. the ambience was nice, very chill. and chris is always good for conversation. our drivel ran from a comparative look at christianism vs buddhism to the global tragedy of HIV to the video game market. fun times indeed. the only draw back i realized, is that once you actually got outside, you realized that you and your clothes... smell like ass! not wearing this jacket tomorrow.
.
it has been an odd return back to school. its odd, its only three short weeks before christmas break and someone, i guess i should be feeling all hard core and everything about school and especially studio... but honestly... i'm not. i mean come on, i intend to utilize my ridiculously cheap jet blue ticket to new york the coming two weekends. haha... i really hope i can do it. i mean, its no biggie financially if i don't but just the idea of going away for the "weekend" to new york, hmm... has kind of jet setting appeal to it. might as well indulge if i can. that is the goal, but if i feel like i really can't, sorry reader... won't be a hot weekend entry to write about. booo hooo.
.
speaking about self-absorbment... what about a cutesey self-poised picture. joys of a digital camera. :-). oh and i have to put a link to the funny... yet tragic story... about the girl who died after kissing her boyfriend... she had peanut allergies... he had just chomped on a delcious peanut butter snack. talk about the kiss of death... umm hum.
.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051128/ap_on_re_ca/canada_deadly_kiss
. 
Roxy Your Body
ahhh...the weekend...of thanksgiving break that is...
.
saturday
.
despite intentions of getting up earlier than 2pm, guess what? i woke up at 2 pm, just in time to find my way to Costco to accompany alice and company for some suburban wholesale shopping. two hours later i walked out with a bouquet of flowers (as a gift for my gracious friends who let me stay over the break) and a 25 pack of sensor razor catridge (these things are mad expensive non-wholesale you know!). of course you know if i actually lived in new york i would have been walking out with everything from the mini crab cake assortment to the never ending supply of q-tips. anyways, alice and company dropped me off and also took a gander at yvonne's brooklyn pad... i think they like it, sans the cats of course.
.
my evening plans were originally to just have dinner at republic in union square with robert, but in the afternoon he called and said he had just had the most frustrating day with itunes and needed to blow off some steam... so he suggested that yes, he did want to go to roxy. i remember the first time i went to roxy, was it with mary? must have been. it was always mad mad fun. roxy is one of those places i think with enough critical mass so that you can get lost in the crowd if you like but also has enough people to have a great assortment of eye candy, with or without the go go dancers even. after republic, spending $7 on noodles and $9 on a martini (only manhattan), and a brainstorming idea of "restaurant installational ephemera", robert and i walked across manhattan first from union square to alice's place on 26th to fetch her brother's "john blair" card (discount card for the roxy) and then really across manhattan to roxy on 10th (from 3rd). it was a little of a hike but hey, worked off dinner's calories i guess.
.
when we got there we had to do a little shady "john blair" card switching. it almost worked but in all honestly, there was no one in the line, so switching cards behind my back was kind of like doing it in a desert surrounded by video cameras. after i paid my $15, and tried to tell robert to pick up the damn card i had slid behind me (the boy i guess wasn't thinking), robert got the card and tried to pay another discounted fare. but we weren't smooth enough and the cashier didn't buy it. oh well. but still, it was worth a try. do you know how much cover was "that" night... $30!!! are you fucking crazy! well... we got one discount and one regular price so splitting the difference it was about $20 per person... still kind of steep but oh well. let's shake some ass.
.
the roxy evening went fabulously. first hour was just sort of spent chilling and people watching. and then once the crowd got to a certain density, it was all dancing from there... a good three hours i would imagine. i think i definitely could have stayed later (a few times i have stayed till like 6-7 AM) but both robert and i wanted to have usable sundays, the day after. but the music overall was really good, although i have to gripe that the speakers or whatever were somewhat fucked up and kepted skipping sometimes. at first it sounded like someone was just mixing the track, but then it sounded like bad mixing, and then it was just plain bad. despite that fault, i definitely got my groove on, shook my ass, and got my ass grabbed (hello! like excuse me!). haha, some of the clientele was yummy as well. i personally had three hotties i zoomed in over the course of the evening... a deliciously gansta yakuza looking asian boy (in a posse of beautiful asian men nonetheless), another bad irish looking boy with a goatee, and finally at the ass end, a simply gorgeous man... 5'10 or so, solid build, hairy chest, the permanent kind of 5 o'clock shadow, those amazingly sexy forearms, uh huh, you know... whooo... gorgeous! anyways, they were great pawns in my mental game of "have no balls to go up to, but good enough to just mozy my way up to and dance next too... yum".
.
and speaking of gorgeous men. the DJ that was mixing that night is out of this world. well, i mean, he's one hot looking guy... his mixing (if he indeed was responsible for those odds skips) is not much to be desired (although his CD that was passed into the crowd wasn't too bad). anyways, i found a pic of this bad boy on the net, here's the eye candy missed during the thanksgiving feast. this guy can definitely roxy my body anytime. by the way his name is brett henrichsen... how butch...heh heh.
.
after robert and i finally retired from roxy, we walked across manhattan again towards union square. what a lot of walking. on the way, i needed to feed my hunger for grease after dancing so we stopped by this corner pizza joint that apparently was a magnet for tunnel and bridge crowd twink boys, with a higher than usual annoyance factor exuding out of their every gay little biore declogged pores. nuff said... i got my food and jetted. thanks for venturing into that mess with me robert. sigh.
.
eventually i found my own way back to brooklyn. over the break, robert asked me if i did move to new york, where actually would i live. i definitely think i am a below 33 at least kind of guy, below 14 even better (if i can afford it... or if i can find a rich husband like mr. henrichson... wink wink). but yeah, there's just so much more stuff that i would do to begin with in lower manhattan. not that upper manhattan is suburbia, but there's just a greater... intoxicating... ambience of ... metropolis... in lower manhattan. well, that not true since the greatest density actually is midtown, but still... the kind of metropolis i like.
.
sunday
.
today was a funny and unexpected (although it should have been expected if i just decided to think a little) change of events. after waking up at 2 pm (might as well be consistent you know) i cleaned up my shit and left the brooklyn pad to have dim sum with tony. it was a pleasant dim sum lunch and afterwards, tony walked me a bit to the bus. let me tell you, i stood in line for less than 10 minutes when i realized that there was NO WAY i would be a happy camper trying to get home to boston this sunday afternoon. so i decided, fuck it. let's just stay another evening. it's not like i can't just skip my morning class... and i STILL had to write that paper (procrastinator!!) and it would be much easier to write it actually on a laptop which i could avail myself to at alice's (who was close by) than to make stupid notes on a bumpy bus ride...to only type it up after getting back. much more sense. so i spent the evening at alice's with a mix of note taking, actual paper writing, and watching the discovery channel on some ridicuously crazy story about a girl born without a face. not to sound insensitive... but man, this girl was fucked up! yikes. well, it seems i witnessed both extremes of the human attractability spectrum this weekend.
.
monday
.
sleeping on the floor at alice's (the only available option) was less than prime, although it was still convenient since i had to catch the 7 AM bus back to boston. well, if i wasn't able to sleep the night before, at least i easily conked out on the bus. around noon i finally got home after what seemed like actually a very long vacation and cleaned up my stuff a little before i had to go to my 1:30 class. it was sort of silly though, i was falling asleep anyways so i decided just to skip the second half and spend the rest of the evening doing all the "shit" i had to do and should have done over break. ahh... c'est la vie. and now, three weeks of "hell" supposedly before this semester is finally over.
.
to close out this entry, what about some more eye candy? i thought these were funny images i gathered from either "Next" or "HX" (the gay life circulars in NYC). one i imagine as my own sexy slavedom to design work (or maybe its just a representation of a kinky fantasy of mine... you know, i have to say that cartoon "gay" men are hot). the other is a funny tongue and cheek view on "work and play"... or something like that. ;-)
.
.
woof!
Holiday Hang Ups
i hope everyone's thanksgiving was a good one. i have had a great time in new york these past few days and just have had the urge to put down to blog some of the occurences that have peppered my days and the thoughts that have accompanied them. overall, it has been fairly relaxing but i wish i am hoping i can shift my schedule a little bit for the remaining days from the sleeping at 3-4 AM and waking up at 3-4 PM. not that i am complaining about the twelve hour sleep but still, you kind of feel like a bum after a while. anyways, this post will cover a few days because i am too lazy to create separate entries, so please bare with the probably unrelated storylines here, mr. and ms. reader.
.
wednesday
.
after waking up around 1 or 2 in the afternoon (that late rising i can understand because mind you i had not slepted at all the previous 24 hour cycle), i messed around my brooklyn friend's house a bit and then decided to go on an flaneur of lower manhattan. unfortunately the weather these past few days have not been the most conducive to just strolling around manhattan but like the masochist i am, i perservered the biting cold. but i was able to finally walk around battery park city and sort of solidified more clearly my mental geography of lower manhattan a little more. eventually, i strolled around the tip of manhattan, made a small detour to check out the world trade center exhibit in the winter garden, and then continued up the hudson river park where i began to get a heavy flood of nostalgia from all those site visits i made in fifth year in college to do "site documentation". walking down christopher street was a somewhat surreal expereince after you have spent so many weekends analyzing its physical structure. the funny thing is, i still can't tell you what any of those shops are like because i have actually never been in them. back then, i think i will still too nervous really and now well, i don't see much of a point to unless someone else wanted to go. but who knows, i would not put it pass me to just non-chalantly check out the mr. leather shop... heh heh.
.
as the sun began setting, the temperature really began to drop and so by that time i decided to go on a trek to find warming accessories so it led me to soho. it didn't take me long though to find a stand selling $10 "cashmere" scarves. i got a pretty white one that at the time felt soft and for $10, why not? the two days since, i've begun realizing why this "cashmere" was $10. given some more time, this $10 scarf will shed most of its body mass unto your clothes... hmm, maybe in some wierd way its still worth its money because well, the "cashmere" becomes a somewhat haphazard layer... on a few of your clothing items... so its value is sort of "spread around". haha. but it's good for now. and i also eventually picked up cheap gloves at HM that have faired somewhat better so far, but then again, HM stuff i don't hold to the highest quality standards.
.
eventually i found my way after that to the upper east side. robert wanted to go see the "inflation" of the macy's parade balloons... hmm.. yeah, he did. ;-) i have to admit it was slightly amusing but in the end my freezing toes were begging for attention so i had to say this was enough. we then went to warm ourselves up on some good southern cooking and some further illumination of our respective dating lives ( or in my case, lack of one). but that's ok, my current dilema honestly is not how to have more dates, but actually how to figure how i can end the dating game with a guy... which might be easier than in it sounds because it seems to have ended itself already. but like i was discussing in a previous post, i really don't like it when guys seem to just drop off the face of the earth, so believing in karma, as i do... i really should quickly remediate that problem.
.
after dinner, we went to go see "rent"...which enjoyable as it was enough... because it was really a very very truthful translation of the musical to film, in the end, it kind of just made me want to see it in the theatre... that is the musical broadway theatre. nonetheless, tears were welling up at certain points in the movie. and then finally, to top off the day, an almost two hour journey to get back to brooklyn... mostly due to the green line being closed for 20 something blocks and me having to walk from upper midtown to grand central...which wouldn't be too bad on a nice day but as i mentioned... it wasn't a nice day. but in strange way, it was also one of those moments where i walk in new york and feel completely at peace with things and there is a beautiful calmness and stillness in those solitary, yet completely satifying... moments.
.
a tragic... yet funny...story about the macy's day parade that happened the following day.
.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051124/ap_on_re_us/thanksgiving_parade
.
thursday (thanksgiving)
.
so guess when i woke up on thanksgiving..... yeah... around 3 pm i think. oh well, i am on break. after making some calls to see what everyone else was doing, i found myself in a cleaning mode so i decided to clean my gracious friend's brooklyn abode...which i hope they will appreciate, well, as much as i think they can appreciate it. it's funny, this friend of mine... yvonne... is one of my best friends from college, and i love her to death... but honestly... i have a history of cleaning her place its not even funny. it all started freshman year where i came to hang out and went psycho when i realized that her pet ferret, not only was leaving shedded hair almost everywhere, but was also lining the baseboards in ferret poop. ok, that's TOO much! i'm sorry... am i clean freak? well maybe so... but i just can't stand to be in a place i consider "dirty" for an extended period of time... and honestly, even if its not "my" place, and therefore not really my "place" to clean the place, i consider being in that place personal torture. so as any aries would do, if no one else is doing it, i'd rather do it myself. so for the next hour or so i cleaned their place.. and honestly it wasn't like i got down to wiping baseboards but i did wash the dishes in the sink, wipe down the counters, threw away "junk" and then swept the whole goddamn place (that i am so lucky to be able to stay in for so many days of course). now if this was "my" place it would also have gone through de-fumigation, air freshening, and floral bouquet decking... heehee.
.
after satisfying myself with such domestic chores, i realized i had to attend a thanksgiving dinner. so off to alice's place i went. after taking a few detours to find tea lights and twine (to tie up the turkey and pss pss ...more... heh heh) i found myself in the lower east side, more... grammercy park area... and within five minute i was tieing up a turkey roll thing... sort of psuedo "tur-duck-en" without the stuffing respective animals in other's asses part. some pictures to illuminate the endeavor (which turned out matha stewart fabulous).
.
.
whole lots of tasty fun honies. my dominatrix gastrinome would be proud.
.
the evening was actually fairly enjoyable. robert accompanied us asian folk for a relatively western style thanksgiving, but it was all good. all of us chinks, were relative transplants anyways so it was all good, untill some of the asians started speaking in only cantonese... how declasse. haha, just kidding. no, but kudos to rob for bringing two bottles of wine because, like him, i definitely needed it. but overall, the food was great and the company and chat good. it was a good thanksgiving.
.
on a somewhat more pontificative point, one should always have at least a passing moment of "thankfulness" on thanksgiving. i mean, more than any american holiday, arguably, thanksgiving has been able to maintain a sort of hallowed tradition where commercialization has not been so successful at "cheapening". i mean, except for people who "keep up with the jones" via if they have a butterball or a hmmm... purdue?... turkey or say if they have thanksgiving at McD's or a banquet spread at their country estate... thanksgiving really has been about people getting together for the fact of getting together, if only but simulacra as a cynic might insinuate. but still, the idea that thanksgiving gives you an excuse to sort of put aside your pride or uncomfortableness or feeling like just silly, for expressing some form of... "i just like spending this time with you"... i think... is great.
.
before dinner while hanging out at alice's place, i had the chance to finally peruse her thesis book which she had just fairly recently finished. now, i've known alice ever since the begginning of college and we certianly, probably beyond any of my other friends, have had definite "ups" and "down". there were dsitinct moments in our history that we hated each other or at least one of us hated the other... but more or less we've stuck together. now maybe its because we've known each other for so long, that i don't ever really "worry" if we "are" friends" or not. i mean, for sure, i know that i am one of the more "colorful" characters in her life, but i dunno, i think i just have a personal knack of somehow dimunating what i "think" i mean to other people. and its not that i consider myself unimportant, i think i just am never really sure how "deep" of a connection i have with someone. but then again, i tend to over complicate all my relationships and should often take my own advice of simply enjoying the company. anyways, what brought up all of this was that reading the "credits" in her book... where, many of us "gave thanks" to who we thought were important in our lives or maybe just the production of the book... i find myself named individually. now, not to suggest anything, in my own book, i had simply grouped everyone together in a general friends category because i felt that anyone who i considered really important as a friend would feel included in that just by default. but honestly, it isn't the same. and i say that because well, seeing my own name aside from the rest of the world, and a description saying "above all else, thanks for listening"... it honestly felt good... to sort of have that unequivocable ...hmm... validation.... of your "value" to someone.
.
i mean, be it true or not, sometimes i think, a goal in "life" is coming to terms with your own personal "value" in relation to the people around you. and its not to suggest its a competition, but in some ways, there's is some kind of...resistance... sometimes, in being "open" about expressing that value that you hold for someone else, or even in receiving and accepting that value. i am certain that i don't make any sense now. but all i can sort of say, is that, it honestly felt good to sort of realize that someone was willing to sort of in some small way even, let the world know that you mattered in someway to them. and conversely, it made me question myself on how much or little, i let the people in my life know... how important they are. in classic alex cynic comedic style... after reading that... my first reaction was to ask first if that was alex as in "me" alex... and then to ask the meaning of the dedication in a sarcastic tone, saying... "when have i ever listened to you?".
.
words i wish i could take back. a thank you would have been so much better. but somehow, i guess comedy was easier way for me to digest it but i fear it might have given an image that i don't value what she did.... when in fact it touched my heart. i think the problem is that more direct ways of telling people that you matter always seems weird... and the uncomfortability and weirdness then become over thought out and then ultimately come across as contrived or forced. but maybe that's not the right attitude. i mean, in my small miniscule ways, i think i "do" things that i hope are read as statements of "i care"... remembering birthdays, holidays, random hello, what's up emails and phone calls, and just a distinct interest in the lives of people i care about. but i guess, if that's realy enough or would it be easier (not that its hard because that is sort of my modus operandi) to simply just say sometimes, or write it down somewhere, you are important to me.
.
because it sort of made my thanksgiving in a way. and like many other thanksgivings, what i'm thankul for is that i have some wonderful people around me, albeit our faults and eccentricities...yes, actually indeed because of them, we all sort of move in fateful orbits around each other.
.
cheesy metaphor time. the planetary bodies all have their orbits somewhat dependent on their individual phsyical qualities of center of gravity, mass, speed or rotation, etc... but they are all sort of held together in a family of sorts, and they come closer and grow far apart, but their is uncanny ... periodicty... to their movements. in life, it's funny how people come in and out of your life, it all seems sort of random and chaotic... but i think its just that our own limited perspective on our existence allows us to only see a small segment of that natural periodicity, so small, that we forget there is a natural rythm, dare i say a reason, we come in and out of the lives of those around us... but we are all ultimately... still together. i was i think about 8 years old when i saw haley's comet, and so i will be probably be dead by the time haley's comes towards earth again... a once in a lifetime experience, like a "true" love. but in the perspective of a whole legacy of lives, the one "true" love happens all the time.
.
a small story about how great things can come in small packages.
.
.
friday
.
after waking at my usual hour of 2 pm, i mozied around the house a little bit before heading into manhattan again for my little highlight of the day, that is my massage appointment. i decided the day before to set an appointment up as sort of small congratulatory gift for having a great review and just in general on surviving a somewhat hectic semester. i got the massage down at this place that i read about in various online magazines and was voted the best deal in manhattan. it was on midtown and in all honestly, the 60 minute massage wasn't bad. the girl who worked on me wasn't afraid to give it to me hard...which i like... haha... and beside the fact that the ambience wasn't the greatest (clinical... yet clean and efficient)... the massesuse was great and courteous and nice. enough for me to tip 20%+ that is. after the massage its not that i felt amazingly relaxed or anything, but in a weird way, i also feel no "soreness" when i stretch... so i think something worked...right? hmmm, wait until i wake up tomorrow, we'll see if the feeling lasts or if it transforms into something bad. yikes.
.
after my massage i decided to be a silly nyc tourist and do the post thanksgiving rush on fifth avenue. well, not that fifth avenue ever really "rushes", but still, there were tons of folk. i stopped by the new abercrombie and fitch store and honestly it was just too much stimulation. the store was packed but strangely enough it seem with almost as much "sale associates" as "customers".. or maybe everyone just looked like an abercrombie fitch model. mind you, i think some of the boys are very good looking, but that whole aesthetic i cerebrally find quite unappealing. anyways, that said, i wouldn't exactly kick an A+F model out of bed...even the one that was grotesquely modeling his perfect abs right in the middle of the store... ewww. ha. after A+F i decided to mozy to something i could one afford, and two, feel more "real" in.... the GAP. despite its faults and not being banana republic (as if BR was something), i still find GAP... fun, and relaxed. now note i would never step down to old navy...please, i do have standards. i found this fabulous pair of pants and pullover combo that i was happy to part with for $26. and holding a bag amongst th crowds, i felt like... ooh... a shopper. haha. now don't tell me you've never bought something simply to just be able to walk around with a shopping bag.
.
but as has been happening with every evening since i have been here, once the sun goes down, it gets fucking cold. i scurried my way back up to ues and hung out with robert over take out and sex and the city. oh, and i even found a hmm... useful... piece of furniture for him, aka, via dumpster diving. that's one thing about that boy that is certainly different from moi... for me... i guess because of the designer in me... my living environment is numero uno on my "list" of getting my groove on in a new place. i have to feel completely at home in the sense of really personalizing my space before anything else...and usually its ok, because i have to do quickly. its like the relationship of food, water, and air. air is like a job, actually bringing in income to be able to live. but a quick second, aka, water that you would die without of in a matter of days, would be my "space"... if it be modest or grandeur it doesn't matter, i have to "make" my space so that when someone visits, they will immediately feel if nothing else, the place has "character". on the week, month level, aka.... food... would be everything else... gym, friends, haha. maybe there's something wrong with that but then again, maybe not. your living environment is something you have complete control of, within means, so does it not make sense to tackle the "easier" problems first?
.
anyways, after a few great episodes of sex and the city (including one where robert and i ask... how did stanford get such an amazingly good looking boyfriend... and of course, the boyfriend quips in a ridicously child-like but honestly, still with clarion... clarity... well... maybe he just makes her laugh. and you realize... yes, can't argue with that.) we decided to do a "small" night on the town and go to the bar robert told me about where apparently "nice" gay men frequent. haha... oxymoron no? no, it was nice enough, and the crowd did seem much less "attitudy" than most chelsea, or nyc for that matter, homo haunts. tony, alice's brother also decided to come, and us triplets have a decently good time i think. of course, i am always having a good time when i have four jack and cokes and good people to hear me talk (which i realize i do a lot of when i drink...errrr).
.
which brings me to another sort of pontificative moment? question in essence being... why do gay men go out? robert stated something that made me internally turn over...over a few jack and cokes... what he really meant by it. it was harmless enough of a question/statement... "why are all the good looking people leaving"... or to that effect. now, i think i did simply ask in reply, "do you come to bars and clubs to look at other people?" and he said, well, it is sort of in a way "part" of the experience... the sort of "scenery", "ambience", "crowd" i guess. and on one level, i can definitely understand that, i mean, if i found myself in a hodgepodge of leather daddies i definitely wouldn't feel... at ease. or if i found myself amongst skinhead goth punk rockers. but i dunno, on another leather... i have the feeling... so what does it matter who's around?
.
but i think a question like that illuminates the "multiple" reasons why gay men...or simply people in general... come to "social" places. and of course, part of the reason is to come to places to meet people, and if that is a "goal" of sorts, i guess it makes sense to be concerned about the social environment in terms of people type composition. i.e. if you want leather daddy or skinhead friends, then obviously you would gravitate towards those venues or at least be aware of the potential of whatever crowd you are in for such social encounters. and that's all fine and dandy, and downright common sense really.
.
but it makes me wonder why "i" go out. in all honesty, i am not good at "meeting" people, especially at bars and clubs. i dunno, the enviroment just is not conducive to my "game"...whatever that is of course. now, i am not the most embullient or exudingly affable person in the world, but give me a relaxed dinner party, or small loungy mixer of good friends and a few "new" people thrown in the mix, i usually can be quite the convesationalist, because you know... in the end... i really do love to hear myself talk. but it just doesn't work for me in the same way at clubs and bars. hence why i have never gone out to such venues by myself and really do not see myself doing it either, be it really because i am horribly shy or just really not into the scene. maybe a little of both, because i love dancing at clubs and lounging and drinking at bars, but only with people i know already, or if i don't know them, within fairly fairly small groups. i don't do the hitting on people and coming up with silly excuses to talk or my god, grabbing people on the dancefloor, thing... just not my style.
.
i sometimes mentioned that at bars and clubs i am fairly oblivious to all the checking out, flirtations, hooking up etc (i just found out that the upper "section" of the roxy is where people have sex... what???!!!) partly because i have bad vision to begin with and i am usually too lazy to bring glasses and don't wear contacts. and its true, it relatively hard for me to really see if anyone really is "cute" or not. but then again, knowing my attitude towards things like "problems", fixing the problem is simpe enough... if i really thought of it as a problem that is. but obviously, it seems i don't. like this evening, and many evenings when i go out, i find moments where i scan across the room, into a relative abyss of semi shadows, and "think" someone is looking my way and continues to look my way over an amount of time. i am horrible gauge of this art, but still, chances are, at least a few of them were actually "checking me out" or whatever its called. but because i have no "skills" and do not have the balls to just wave or even fucking smile, i usually end up delving into some conversation with people i am with at the time.... probably sending the message... i am talking to my boyfriend or i am not interested... which is unfair because in the shadows, i don't even know what you look like.
.
but honestly i would so much rather talk to my friends instead of playing the silly game of trying to flirt when you can hardly hear what the other person is saying. god, its hard enough to have a convesation with people you actually are interested in talking real, albeit unimportant chatter, things about, let alone, trying to "introduce" yourself and saying something hopefully witty and sexy and cool. haha. point being, i love hanging out with friends at bars and clubs, but for all i care, relatively, there could be eskimoes and walruses flopping around (cool bar idea!), i'd still be more interested in the social interaction with the people i know.
.
sigh, but maybe that's not really helping things out. it might be high time to learn to converse with eskimoes and walruses. or maybe eskimoes and walruses could take the load off my shoulders and just come up out of the fucking shadows and say hello. eh... maybe i am just not "that" charming. sigh, oh well. at least i still got my friends and i'd be lying if i said i wasn't having a great time nonetheless.
.
that's why i go out.
.
and just in case you feel like learning iceberg-ese
.
Remember to Breath
apologies to my avid blog readers for the paucity of entries of late (to all negative 2 of you that is, heh heh). i have been most most busy this past weekend and have had no random time to jot some fascinating insights on life for your purview. the past few days have been at the labor of studio... for the presentation i had just this afternoon. as i type this at my gracious friend's house in brooklyn (i will be staying in nyc for the thanksgiving holiday season, thank god i am out of boston!), i'm think what important thing i should make facetious commentary about today. can't really think of anything except just to say that i am very happy (as much as my sleep deprived body can be that is) that all my hard hard work paid off in a very very good review. honestly, it was probably one of the best reviews i have had in a while. hopefully it won't be the only. i kind of have a habit of having one fairly good review, usually interim, and then somehow the magic wears off in the latter half of the semester and the final is pretty hmm... ho hum. at least that was how it was last semester, but i was also extremely tired last presentation. but i don't think that is teh real reason actually, since i only got one hour of sleep really for this one. i think it was just that the project clicked and i was still intrinsically interested in it. the gist of what failed aout last semester's project was that i just wasn't that interested and in the end the project was going through the motions, a formalistic play of graphic image. and i think the critics easily realized the non-chalant, dis-engaged, and non-commital attitude.
.
but this project did click. after various iterations where i was beginning to already feel like i was just going through the motions, i finally took the suggestion of truly "simplifying" the project and in the end i think there was a lot of fruition. maybe that's one valid approach...a sort of... do you have the major gesture clear and correct and then the complexities you can add to it, the seasong, where the base is already good. in metaphorical style, i think teh shortcomings before were attributable to basically trying to make base stock with seasoning... not so good. in the end, it's just a lot of disparate idea without a consistent medium to really heighten their "flavor".
hmmm, can't you tell its thanksgiving. tomorrow after i wake from a long slumber, i am just going to sleep and sleep until i want to fully get up, i should think about what i am bringing, if anything to the thanksgiving dinner i am attending. i want to make this fantastic mushroom/chesnut soup i made before but its dependent on if there is a blender/food processor around.... but it is soooo good. :)
.
anyways, it was a good studio review. and funny enough it seemed very very short. i mean, i sort of just babbled here and there about the design... honestly only refered to the drawings that took me like 10 hours to produce like three time, just to clarify the moves i was making in the model, and actually didn't find myself talking to much "bullshit" and "pompous" big idea you know. it was just hey, this is the concept i am interested in and voila, here's an attempt at it. what do you think. but i am always curious what drives a critic's remarks. i think one critic sort of just enjoyed the image of the building, the other was intrigued by it but was more concerned about urban level critiques (which really wasn't suppose to be the point of this review) and finally, my own professor seemed just quietly satisfied that i had made a distinct move away from sort of the "seasoning based... base" i was concocting at first. ultimately i think it's that line between clear expression and just reckless idiosyncrasy that i am always trying to negotiate.. often i make moves that i am not exactly sure why they are that way except at the moment i am drawing the line, i rationalize that move through something...an accumulated list of "why's"... but eventually this list doe snothing to form, let alone allude or reinfore an already vague notion of "big why". in this review, i guess i made a simply clear form, with some notion of a formalistic why that ran through the entire project, but then expanded (or complicated ...in a good way) the "why".
.
sorry to all my non-architect readers on the esoteric blabber, but as you've probbaly realize self analysis, in all apsects of my life is my TiVo like addiction.
.
so i will stop now then and just say i am relieved that break has started. i have a book of reading i "could" read but maybe i will just be lazy and do jack. now, i do HAVE to write a paper for my housing class, which i had a great hour long conversation with my mom the other day discussing the pros and cons of the mortgage tax deduction system in the US and its effects on housing affordability. but other than that, i am relatively free, or relative to what inclination i have. all i want to really do now is crawl into bed and just sleep. and thsi weekend, finally get a chance to breath..... in between stuffing my face with turkey of course. haha. happy thanksgiving everyone
Maybe the Next Best Thing
i got an email from an old friend yesterday and it got me thinking (as usual) about what has happened in my life so far. i've known this girl since college and technically a little before actually. knowing that i was going to school waaaay out of state, i decided to use the internet to possibly find friends (as much as the internet can afford that is) before i got to campus and then maybe i wouldn't feel like such a dorkus. not that i was painfully shy in high school, i don't think, but just in general i knew it would be nice to "know" someone amongst all the potential stress of a new life. anyhow, so i met her on aol in some kind of chat room or whatever and we got along and so we set out to hang out once we got to campus.
.
don't worry, she turned out to not be a pyscho, or just pyscho enough to be refreshing. we became instant friends and in some ways i enjoyed her company a lot because she happened to be one of the rare friends outside of architecture that i was able to maintain in contact with. anyways, another reason i guess what made her special was because more or less i think she was the last girl i seriously considered as a potential for something more serious, back in the days where i was still a resident of Bi-ville and hadn't moved on to Gay-town yet... but had been definitely "tunnel and bridge" crowd for a while already. anyways, long story made short, this girl made me realize that there just wasn't much there for me with chicks (unless heavily intoxicated as i later found out, funny story there) when it came down to the nitty gritty...hmm..or lack there of heh heh. but...we still were friends despite that small debacle and comedy of errors.
.
actually a year after i had failed in my attempt to bring myself to quote unquote... seal the deal, i finally brought myself toa ctually...verbally that is...reveal my sexuality to her (i had to wait for my permanent rainbow card to come down you know). her expression, like most girls i have come out to, was... uh, duh... i figured that out a while ago honey... and its ok, i don't take it personally that you didn't want to boink me. haha, no, that latter statement was not uttered mind you. anyhow, we have been good friends ever since even though she has decided to make her life on the other side of the world.
.
which brings me to my actual point of her email that she sent. it was a pretty run of the mill actually but what got me "thinking" was that she mentioned how she and her boyfriend have been doing. this is the boyfriend that she met i believe during sophomore year in college and have been with, more or less, since then... so that makes it almost...hmmm... at least 6 years? and eventhough, it wasn't a full 6 years, because they were that couple that sort of broke up and made up continually, it still amazes me that people like that still sort of ... end up together.
.
of course understand my position, as someone who has yet to see any relationship last more than six months, let alone six years! i actually have another friend too who pretty much occupies the same position, having been in and out of a relationship with a guy and actually is sort of "psuedo-married" to him (complicated and sensitive story) now. anyways, what makes both of these girls the same, is that the relationship that "I" share with them (their boyfriends being relatively less "my" friends) has often been marked by distinct conversations centering around... "oh my god, i am so through with him, the guy is pyscho!". of course they have also been punctuated (like swiss cheese!) with statements of "but he loves me" or "he is so good to me". maybe it's just my character, but i am often more apt to think, if you are so "through" with him, than aren't you just through with him... and even if he is so good to you or loves you, does that automatically make you love him. do you love him because he loves you? what kind of silly "raison d'etre" is that?
.
these are some of the eternal questions of love i guess. but aren't you straight girls glad that you have your prized acessory gay male friends to bitch too and say... god, why can't my boyfriend just be more like YOU!!! but that actually also wants to pound me like the dirty bitch i am. haha. all in good fun kiddies. seriously though, what would i know about what it takes (in terms of what you "give up to gain") to have a "long term relationship" (even if not stable or consistent)???
.
as one of the gazillion single persons out there, some questions to be asked... when is the value of "just" being attached worth the hassle of being attached? when does someone make you happy enough for you to put up with their shit? when will you find someone that will put up with your shit? haha. i don't assume to know any of the answers of course, or even know if these questions are ultimately valuable.
.
hmmm, here's another way of framing the question. would i trade shoes with these two girls i know who have had long long relationships that most likely will settle into marriage, more or less, but still have had such a rocky history of growing apart, coming together, or... should i say... just settling? i don't know, in my aries like optimism, i kind of would want to say i want "love" and "passion" and all of it true and genuine. if it doesn't work, than fuck it, let's go our own ways and find something that does work? if but only for a moment in my ADD mentality. but on the other hand... my virgo ascendant pragmaticism kind of wonders... is there a special type of growth, maturation, or at least insight that springs from not so perfect relationships? is there something to be gained from fucked up relationships, other than a restraining order and STD's?
.
maybe ultimately it's like good friends. for better or for worse, you've been together so long that you kind of have just gotten use to each other's shit...and in some sort of weird masochistic way, you kind of dig it? but above it all, you value them because of who they are, and not necessarily who you wish they could be. of course you poke and nod and are full of self righteous "suggestions", but YOU ultimately make the choice if you can stand them or not. if so, you maintain the friendship, if not, you get outta town. hmmm... it does sound like a relationships... not so perfect, but maybe the next best thing.
.
Do You Not See It?
a friend forwarded me this link to an online optical illusion. it's fucking awesome.
.
.
i like how the direction mention that here's another example our eyes don't necessarily see what's there. anyhow, in general news, my thanksgiving plans are slowly solidifying. robert and i, instead of doing a thanksgiving for two which i thought was bordering on slightly lame, not because of the company mind you, but just the principal, will now be joining alice and company in a cookout marathon. no, it should be a relatively small affair but at least a little more populated than two people. damn, that would be a lot of leftover turkey. heh heh.
.
if nothing else i am sooo looking forward to having a break. i am not excatly why, but the past few week and especially the last few days, partly being in and out with being sick, i have just felt so exhausted everyday. i have my moments of energy and overall i am fine, but sometimes, all i really want to do in cuddle up in my bed. maybe its just me going into psuedo hibernation haha. it will be nice to have some free time to just chill and re-collect myself.
.
this semester has actually gone by amazingly fast and in general i feel like i have done a lot. studio is going relatively decent although demanding, and once thanksgiving is over, all my other classes will slowly close out without much fanfare thank you. i have tried to find someone a little more special this semester, and not throwing in the towel, but in general it was fun i guess. maybe finding a boy isn't the best thing, i mean, another reason, to ditch what i have to do to go cuddle in my bed. haha. and my safer sex outreach has proven to be at the very least, an interesting experience and maybe i will find more my place in it next year. but i what i want is a few days to just organize my photo albums again, attempt a catch up on my missing journal entries, which hopefully this blogging habit should take the place of, and just in general chill and re-focus my energies. next semester i know will be very interesting, contemplating what's to happen after graduation. and i think that's why i am looking forward to thanksgiving break, a moment to sort of pause and think about the past two- four years of my life since college, to sort of chart where i have been, and where i might wanna go.
.
to maybe see something that was always there.
.
Cum et Sine Vox
this evening i had an enjoyable time with my frend chris, whom i know through roberto, hanging out at the boylston bar named "vox", which means voice in latin. the bar is decorated in an urban hip way with visual blurbage on various interior surfaces, to sort of give the feeling of an exploded library i guess. anyhow, i had a chill time, as always, with chris, musing over various topics that have been running through our lives. one conversation that particularly perked my attention revolved around the feeling of a ring around your finger. now of course, for chris, who is married, this was about his wedding ring. i am not exactly sure if that brought up the conversation but i had mentioned that i had just recently lost a ring that i had been wearing for years. it was the ring i had bought when i was in mykonos and forever since except for a semester when it was part of an installation piece i did at cornell, i had always had it on. now, over the years it had slipped off occansionally because it is a little big an in places like the shower, etc, it had slipped off my fingers and hit the tub with a loud whack, alerting to me that i had lost it of course. and even once i believe it had slipped off while i was sleeping and i looked for it for the longest time to only find it within my sheets.
.
however, i have lost it this time in not so opportune of a place. actually, it might be stuck in my sheets for all i know, but in essence i don't know where it is and i could go crazy looking for it so i just don't bother. but man, to think that its been in contact with my body for years, and now, without any fanfare at all, gone. i still unconsciously play with what would have been the ring on my finger, a sort tick that developed over the years but now, sans ring, does not make much sense.
.
so this gets me thinking on something completely unrelated. at the begginning of this blog i had made a fleeting comment that i was dating someone new and that originally i thought the blog should start in order to document the progression of my exploits with this guy. however, even if i wanted to, i am begginning to doubt that will ever materialize. now, i met the beau a few weeks ago and we have gone out a handful of time, not once or twice, but really not like ten times either. but all in all i have had a very good time with him and in general, feel like it is something to keep an eye out for potential development. however, life being as fickle as it is, or maybe just me, the last time i physically hung out with him, i was constantly preoccupied with this feeling of... hmmm, do i really see myself with this person? now granted, maybe it was just my attitude that night and in general i try to avoid those judgements because i think sometimes i really do mentally pre-destine any kind of relationship i have or could have. but still, the last time i met him, i kept thinking... hmmm, do i actually want to see him again?
.
so anyways, this was almost two weeks ago. the week following our last meet he actually was leaving town for a week for work and i happened to call him i believe the night he was leaving to see if he wanted to hang out because i happen to be in his part of town. i didn't expect really to meet and we didn't but he called me the next day just to say hello and left a message bc i didn't get it. now... that has been almost two weeks now and i have yet to call him and he has yet to call me. now...this is my quandrary of cum et sine vox...or with or without voice.
.
what does it mean, at this stage of a relationship, the very earliest stage, when someone calls you, and you don't return it, and then they don't return it? at this stage, is this phone calling game automatically a one to one relationship? or are we just playing a game of "chicken"? so let me repeat, i call him and leave message, he call me to return the message by leaving one, i have yet to call him back, and he has yet to call me back. have i sent a subtle message to him that i am not interested simply because i didn't return his call? or is he actually taking the opportunity to sort of sulk away because in general it is expected to sort of have a one to one calling relationship? and why am i concerned in the first place? in all honesty, i can't tell if we really had any potential. at times i think yes, but at many times i think no. so in some ways, this generates a particular apathy on my part that i think could be sending a distinct message of .. "i am NOT interested" any more.
.
but that's not really true though. i am interested to a "degree" i think. but if you were to ask me if there was a "za-za-zoom" there, i'd be hard pressed to say so, maybe a "bada-bing-bada-bang" but not a "za-za-zoom". but i don't want to come off as one of those assholes that just stop calling. because i HATE when guys do that. but at the same time, what am i suppose to do? call him and say, hey, sorry i haven't called, i have just been really busy, how have you been, you wanna hang out sometime? hmm...i guess that doesn't hurt. if nothing else, i wanna be friends. but how do you necessarily tell a guy...you know, you're nice, but not excatly sure if there is something "more" here? haha... why not just that? is it an ego thing? what if the guy was very non-chalant and said, yeah, i don't think there is anything there. i mean, logically, if someone who you weren't very interested in, also said the same to you...wouldn't you feel kind of relieved, relieved in the sense you wouldn't have to feel like you were giving wrong messages or whatever? but one can't deny that it's kind of cool to just be wanted...at your whim no? maybe that just conceited. but when the ball is in your court, there's a degree of smugness in it.
.
ultimately it is ego i think. you avoid asking because either answer is going to suck and relieve in some way. if he agrees that there's nothing there, you're relieved but disappointed of not being wanted... if he says he thinks something's there, you feel like an asshole or you feel the guy is potential psycho stalker, but you get a little buzz from the admiration. its much easier to sort of just let things blow over and hope you won't meet each other in the street.
.
a recent sex and the city episode was about the "ghosts" of relationship pasts that haunt us. i think you don't even have to be in a relationship to be haunted. simply the people you are just begginning to know but realize or think you realize that you aren't "really" clicking become the ghost that haunt you if you don't take care of them. and of course, there are those really pyscho people that become stalkers after you have been honest to them. they rather preferred to just be ignored but when you're blunt and say its just not happening, then they take offense. go figure.
.
but i do "believe" in honesty. i think i should call this guy and just say...hey what's up? and in all honesty, i am far from "giving up" on the fellow. but i am intrigued why he hasn't called... and of course why i haven't. i should give up the ghost and gain my voice back.
.
funny enough, the cold i had before it more a cough now so speaking is slightly strained. that's my excuse for the moment for not calling him.
.
Who Needs Mr. Big?
here we see the begginning of the inevitable transformation of the sex and the city main cast into exactly who they are actually portraying the lives of ... that is... fabulous new york city gay men. carrie kicks it off by mutating into her gay character foil, aka stanford. fuck, a gay male samantha? probably even too hot for hbo!
.
another interesting yahoo article i read today details a new tv series being developed in collaboration with candace bushnell, aka, the writer of the original sex and the city story.
.
.
in essence, this series, thematically differs from sex and the city in an "age-group in question" way. that, as opposed to four 30-something women who's lives revolve around their sex lives and it multifarious exploits related to it, this new story is about three 40-something (although less we forget samantha was fabulously 40-something) women who, the question of love supposedly having being taken care of already (or simply ignore... even more comic effect), are now in a position to take on the next big thing on the "to-do" this... career. the exploits are about how one gets to the top and well...stays there hopefully... with or without the exploits of sex and love, with obviously more interesting of course. as described by bushnell herself ...
.
'Sex and the City' was about looking for Mr. Big and trying to find him," Bushnell said. "This is about women trying to become their own Mr. Big for themselves. "
.
so thinking about my own situation? if there is going to be a "sex and the city" about 30 something women, and now 40 something women... what about 20 something gay men? well, of course, everyone knows that "sex and the city" really was about late 30 something gay men though. but still, what about our age category? the late 20's are sort of the netherworld of cultural un-popularity. the early 20's are devoured by MTV. i mean, when i turned 25, i realized i couldn't even try out for the "real world" anymore. can you imagine the depression i went through ;-).
.
seriously, what are late 20 somethings "suppose" to do? thinking about bushnell's comment about either looking for mr. big or becoming mr. big, maybe the late 20's are an age of naievete where you actually believe that with enough effort you might be able to land both? that is, find that awesome boyfriend that eventually you can marry and move to the suburbs with AND move up the corporate ladder to become CEO by 35? it's the optimism of youth when you think, geez, my waistline is the best it will ever be and i'm as enthusiastic about work as i'll ever be as well, that makes you think you are invincible. and granted, i think some people can do that. who are just utterly fabulous and able to land both love and career simultaneously. but for the most of us, i think the late 20's are about thinking you can do anything, eventually realizing you haven't done shit, and then going into a mid-life crisis when you hit 30.
.
i don't know much about funny... but that shit sounds like it could be hilarious... ok, maybe just poignant... but funny in a god, i'm such a dumbfuck and the only way i can move on is to laugh at myself kind of way. why has hollywood not picked this up?
.
at the moment, i am taking a "strategic management" class and it talks about how business strategies often fail because they aren't focused enough. it relates that often the reason that a business goes bad is because the owners simply do not make a choice about what they really really want and then take steps that serve that goal above other goals. a company can either be "cost-based" or "differentiation based". furthermore, you can either be "focused" in your scope or "broad". the two by two makes a convenient matrix where "generic strategies" are either focused cost-based, broad cost-based, focused-differentiation, and broad-differentiation.
.
now, let's talk about love and career. so if we make a matrix that is love and career by focused and broad, meaning you can either be utterly focused on love...or (not and) career or broadly focused on love or (not and) career. so which one would you choose, it seems there no way you can really have your cake and eat it to...or is there?
.
in all honesty, i think i'd rather "be" mr. big first that find him. and here's why. when you "are" mr. big, the ball is in your court. as shallow as it sounds, a man who's "got it together" is amazingly attractive, albeit his age. the thing about men, and i would argue a similar truth is the same with gay men, success in life (as in career) is an aphrodisiac in itself. on one hand we have plenty of examples of, for lack of a better word, "boy toys" and their "sugar daddies"... and on the other hand, which i'd rather more look forward too ... the pool of men who are like you ... that are well aged AND fabulously successful, is obviously smaller (bc not everyone becomes successful) and therefore, if comprability is a basis for good relationship, there are less rotten apples to throw out. in another way of saying ... i think when you are young, the field is much much broader, and therefor there are statistically more chances for NOT finding the right one in relation to finding the right one. everyone is given the opportunity to be young. in contrast, not everyone applies himself enough to become successful and reinforcing this is that most people, for better or worse reasons, at the very least don't mind their significant others to be successful.
.
so if i had to choose, i'd think i'd focus on being mr. big first. of course, the irony of the situation is that i'm in my late 20's. so ultimately, i don't know what the fuck i want.
.
fun little quiz to tell you which sex and the city hunk is your man!
.
Stronger Moments
this morning i finally got off my ass and went jogging in the morning. its my small little victory of the day, owing to the fact that i have been trying to gte myself to go jogging in the morning for a whole month now. my "health regiment" has been periodically degrading into a laughing stock for a while now, to the point that the only "healthy" thing i do is pop some multivitamins in the morning. i was doing well at the beggining of the school year with running and swimming and all that and i think i remember feeling more energetic. so in response to sort of feeling kind of down and out and trying to "run away" from another nasty cold...which i am sort of having now, i decided to get some natural inner heat going. and i had to drop off the office keys at esr anyways this morning so i just made my run go by there. now the real question is if i can keep it up. heh heh. honestly though, i really should also try to get to the gym because i paid $75 already and have been to the gym and whopping like two times this whole semester. them is expensive gym passes no? hell...
.
while waiting for someone to show up at the office this morning, an interesting yahoo news story caught my eye detailing the rising rate of asian american youth being bullied in the american school systems and the often lack of response by authorities. well duh ... is that news?! it was interesting to see the statement... "In the broadest strokes, Baldillo said, Asian youth are sometimes small in stature and often adhere to cultural mores urging them to avoid confrontation and focus on academics.". so... you saying we is small and won't fight back. one wonders where this cultural stereotype generates from because stereotypes are stereotypes in terms of generalizations, but they must have their genesis somewhere.
.
.
thinking about my youth. i know i was spared a lot of outright racism from my environment, either that or i was completely oblivious to it, which could be a possibility owing to my distinct naievete. i grew up in a mainly white environment so the fact that i was different was obviously... obvious. however, and i have expressed this on many occasion, i think my pysche has in many ways developed around this idea of uniqueness and has transformed what could have also been a handicapping feeling of exclusion, into a self-affirming notion of individualness. of course, conversely one could argue that is was a self protective mechanism from a feeling of subtle exclusion... a who needs them... mentality. i have always "enjoyed" being one of the few and often when in a large group that i could assimilate right into, if i wanted, i often find myself voiceless, not sharing the group mentality, or openly bemused and antagonized by the "uni-mind" nature of groups. i mean, this might just be a manifestation of a character trait of being a "loner", which i won't argue against too much, but still...i find others, and myself... much more interesting when i am the only... fill in the blank... in the group.
.
one of the few times i think i was actually blatantly bullied was when i was in i think third grade and this little polish boy (i don't remember his name but i remember he was polish... go figure) who i happened to also walk home on the same route with would horribly taunt me. i "think" i remember being very much harassed and phsyically pushed around, to the point that he really did make me cry. or at least think so. but somehow, i also remember that in a very strange sadistic way, the kid was also "trying" to make me "fight back". now mind you, maybe this either was a kid who knew i wouldn't fight back and capitalized on the whole sissy boy tactic, or actually a kid who just wanted to fight and was really picking a fight, or possibly a kid who wanted someone who he considered a "friend" to stick up for himself. who knows what goes through the mind of an 8 year old? but the more i think of it, the more i don't think this kid bullied me ... "a lot". maybe it was just that day where he actually made me cry after he pushed me to the ground and wanted me to hit him back, that kind of typecasted my complete memory of him. and in some ways, i do kind of remember the kid wanting to do "friend" stuff like coming over and watching tv and stuff. so maybe this type of violence was just what little boys are suppose to do... the cowboys and indian thing?
.
well... spoken from someone who has never gotten into an actual fight, i'm not exactly sure if i can say if violence is ... completely... a bad thing. i mean for people who have never gotten in a physical fight, one wonders... could you? would you? and for what reasons and motivations? now i wouldn't support joining an "asian gang" like it suggests in the article that many tormented youth resort to, because violence only perpetuates more violence.... but this is curious? could vessels of violence be a good thing for society? i mean, there are unending examples of suppressed sub-culturals who must literally "fight" either for equal representation or simply to not live a life where they are continually in danger, just for being who they are... and it is this fighting that in the end helps define them as "asians in relation to whites". it's definitely arguable that any human socialization is based in part on strife, pain, and physical violence between groups.... a us versus them mentality.
.
in darwinian terms, survival of the fittest? racism, sexism, homophobism, any "-ism" as a human instinct to preserve what one believes is one's kind but equally in converse, the reverse "-ism" that solidifies a group that is undervalued by the group generating the initial "-ism". good or bad?
.
a small theory of mine up for facetious, and hopefully humorous consideration. "asians" (a broad, ridiculously vague categorization) make up the majority or the world's population and incrementally that majority is growing still due to certain parts of asia still possessing relatively high birth-rates. zooming down to the "american asian" experience. we as a group, have been termed, in a phrase conveniently congratulatory and biting simultaneously, as the "model minority". of "non white" (again, amazingly vague categorization) populations in the united states, we are arguably the richest, the most well educated, the most pervasive in small yet accumlative ways, in business, politics, society, etc. Miscegenation issues, although still quite prevalent, are arguable "smaller" between white/asian pairings than other mixed race pairing. it is not uncommon to hear about asian americans in all levels of government and would it honestly be so difficult to consider an "american" of asian ethinic lineage running for president? hmmm, maybe now yes, but arguably "almost" on par with the idea of a woman or a black president.
.
in economy, the asian influence bears more and more weight. one can't talk about numerous economic ventures now without mentioning something about the effect that asia's economies, like china, are in having an effect on the american / western world. and on home shores, property, business, transaction are growing more and more "asian american". and the stereotype of asian high academic performance has well percolated through the american pysche, and is well backed up by actual statistics. in relation to upper tier universities, being asian could actually work "against" you, simply, to be blunt... there are too many highly performing asian applicants and to have a campus become majority asian (like many californian universities for that matter) might smack of "race-preference". (funny how race-preference sort of evolved after affirmative action ideas and schools which had been overwhelmimgly white weren't really race-preferences, they were just racist). all in all, my point being, and hence the theory...
.
have any of you "white people" ever thought what... if... it was all part of an inter-generational, multi-border, socio-eco-political... masterplan? a "chip" ticking in every asian's head to the day when there was enough social, economic, and political control to change the racial power balance, which is so declasse these days to think of in terms of race, but could be easily boiled down to it? a masterplan that pairs a developing asian homeland, seeking to create an irrevocable statement of its social, economic, and political significance on wordlwide affairs... and a more subtle socio-eco-political... indeed cultural plan... down to the visceral details of racial interbreeding... a plan of the usurptation of power in the most powerful country on this planet?
.
ultimately, the question is ... what would it matter if china (or asia in general) became a contestory world superpower to the united states, if the united states is already run by asians? the genius (cackling laugher!) of the plan is that the enemy you think you see growing and threatening to invade what you call home, and is indeed there... preoccupying your attention, but is also working in strategic, subtle tandem with an enemy already amongst your own... your business partner you went to harvard with, your neighborhood professsional from doctors to your favorite chinese greasy spoon, your wife and your beautiful children with green, almond shaped eyes.
.
your partners, your friends, your loved ones ... all vicious enemies determined to drive your "kind" into the ground... flat out genocide ... at a flip of a switch.
.
such irony is not unheard of in history.
.
and all because that kid beat me up in third grade...
.
ha... ha... ha. ok... guys, just to let you know? that was just bullshit... in such a paradigm like that, i'd be turned into fertilizer because like i stated before ... not really white, not really asian ... just special ... and that's how i like it.
Weaker Moments
i feel like shit at the moment. i think i am coming down with another cold this season. not that the last one i had i ever really got over. its weird. i had one of those 72 hour colds like hmm... a month ago, and ever since then my nasal system had still been fucked up right? either my nose feeling chafed like a rubber tire in winter or my nose feeling like a fucking faucet in a no star mo-tel. anyways, i finally decided a few days ago i should stop smoking so maybe it would benefit my system you know. and fucking eh! lo and behold, two days after i quit smoking, i get a fucking cold. real alanis morrisette moment... don't you think?
.
other weaker moments today. i found myself wandering over to the florist today while getting lunch and cough drops (because this morning, it wasn't my nose, but a sort of scratchiness in my throat that was bothering me... oh wait, that and the swollen eyelid... what the fuck? tomorrow, i'm gonna bleed from me ears dude) anyways, the other day's feng shui lecture got me thinking i should add some luck on my side so i picked out a cute arrangement of flora (pink hyanciths...for my love sector...shweet) and wished i picked up this cute guy looking at flowers as well. but since i overheard him ask the florist about getting a "romantic" arrangement, i figured the guy was spoken for already. not that i have the balls to pick a guy up at the flower shop, but ain't into home-wrecking either. ha.
.
and i watched fucking spongebob squarepants today. weak. i swear, i have been a total pussy today. but seriously man, my nose is not happy and i'm going home. oh, about the only manly productive thing i think i happened to achieve today was to figure out how to add links to my blog page, and to a put a dumb wrestling photo of me up. once i was a man.... sigh.... haa... haaa... haaaaaa...choooooooo.
.
Dinner and a Movie
last night i hung out with sam and some of his friends and had a pretty good time. i had been reading alll day yesterday and it was one of those days that your eyes feel swollen (and actually today i think they really are, i.e. i have some sort of under eyelid infection...ewww) so you can't read fairly effectively. anyways, i struggled through despite the fact and eventually at least finished my housing reading. then i met sam and we went to see a movie first. we went to the commons theatre and watched this steve martin/claire danes/jason schwartzman (he is soooo cute!) movie called shopgirl that was very thoughtfully done. in general it was a love story of sorts, the ones that in some ways i guess a typical young person moving to a large metrapolis from more humbler begginnings can always sort of empathize with. that sort of estrangement or lost in the crowd feeling can be quite numbing to life, i know. anyhow the movie was slow at times but it was the nature of the script i think but overall it had its great moments.
.
and despite how sort of glossed over over-narations are, it did say directly a few poignant things to the effect that you can't really just love "part" of a person, in order to truly love, you must be able to want the "all" of them. and i think that's true in many cases where for one reason or another we try to compartmentalize the relationships we have with some people... they are good for me for that, good for me for this. it's ultimately quite selfish but its what we do to sort of try to have our cake and eat it to, to sort of not have to deal with the parts of people we don't like but still to have them around because we feel lonely and there are some thing about them we really do like. the rub in the end is to find someone i guess who you like "enough" to then take on the whole individual. of course "enough" is always the point in question. and as the narrator said, the original lover of claire dane's character lossed out because in the end he could not offer what the possibly lesser (in potential) character of dane's second lover was willing to offer, that is... all of himself, something genuinely tender and true.
.
falling in love is dangerous. that's why it's only good on film. ;-)
.
after the movie, we met up with some of sam's friends and had a quaint italian dinner in the north end at this restaurant called pomodoro. we had to wait for a distinctly long time and the restaurant made a serious faux pax of seating a group of five who came after us and had no reservations before our group of seven that did have reservations. but after we finally got in, it was good times in general, nice laid back people, some good various conversation, a little circus antics as one person accidentally tipped a candle on a sconce and the wax then fell on someone else's hair...ooohhh. but overall, good food, and nice conversation. on the way back i talked for a little bit with one of sam's friends and met the first person i know from the harvard extension school, oh my.
.
alas, now today is supposedly work work work. unfortunately more reading and maybe some studio work, maybe... heh heh. some attempt at a paper possibly? i can't wait for thanksgiving to tell you the truth. a little time away in NYC with good friends and just chilling out. haha, i should start working out again so i can create a little buffer for all that food food and food.
.
Apart Together
the following is an excerpt from Gerald E. Frug's City Making, that am reading now for my housing class that i found immensely interesting and resonates with my preoccupation with an ideal of city life based on accepted and celebrated dissonance. its similar to the iris marion young's article about city and community life, both in essence suggesting that the problem of why we find ourselves so divided (in cities, but could this apply to life as well?) is that we try to imagine ourselves as so connected and supposedly sharing a common vision, but to the detriment that we deny, indeed repress, and are supposedly ashamed of our differences.
.
"in my view, making togetherness the only alternative to separation has set the standard for relationships with others too high. togetherness eliminates strangeness from strangers by reuqiring them to fit into a "we" feeling that nanishes dissonance or discomfort. such a standard is so hard to achieve that it tends to produce more separation than connection. for those who have perceived themsleves as outside of the "we" feeling, the demands of togetherness have required assimilation to norms - white norms, or suburban norms, or upper-middle-class norms (and my words... i would add even counter culture itself ultimately becomes normailizing... i.e. gay cultural "norms") - with which they disagreed. and for those who have learned to identify with these norms, it has closed off the enrichment, and the challenge, of dealing with otherness. above all, the demand for togetherness has suppressed the posibility that one might not feel comfortable with someone yet still be able to deal with him.....like Jane Jacob's description of a city street, city life is a compromise between withdrawal from strangers and engagement with them. the exact nature of this compromise constantly has to be negotiated and renegotiated. it is this process of negotiation that represents the charateristic city alternative to teh idea that the proper solution to one's problems or to the problems of society is to escape from them."
.
and while i'm still on this tangent, and excerpt from the portfolio description of my thesis project, and aids memorial in the west village of new york city that on one hand dealt with this issue of "city life".
.
"as the pier structures had morpher throughout the years of existence and become continually re-signified, from industry, to sub-cultural fringe, to now reclaimed "normalacy", teh memorial as a pier "typology" attempts to extend this continual re-masking of site against the push of the civic vision for a continual smooth green carpet of normalizing stitiching, that is the hudson river park project. this memorial to aids, located in the heart of an often silenced sub-cultural "anti-norm" community... so viscerally devastated by the disease... is in essence an "anti-stitch", it seeks to disrupt the image of smooth continual normalacy. its charge is to not allow you to escape the city, to not allow you to escape the memory of aids. instead it is about recognizing the city as a bricollage of potentially transformative meanings... and it is about recognizing, transforming, and rescripting the concept of "remembering" aids. the memorial is an activating device that generates performances... urban performances that happen everyday but are forgotten and overlooked amongst left over "disused" spaces. the memorial is left over space, but one so intentionally blank that it beckons to be given meaning, and to be re-given meaning time and time again. it is a device that attempts to realize that disease, that history, that culture, and the city is continually being created, destroyed, transformed... and it is exactly that vitality of change that is ultimately the spirit of true democracy for the metropolis. it reminds you that "memorial" in the end is not about "a" memory of an experience... it must be an experience of memory. consequently, the democratic city is not about a solitary image of urban existence, but it is about experiencing the rich, tumultous contention of multiple existences, each battling for its own space of signification."
.
