When despair at last floods your heart,
you will fall to your knees and look to the heavens with tears in your eyes,
screaming in voiceless agony, "What have I done to deserve this?"

and the voice that you've always prayed would respond to your sorrow
will still prefer to remain silent.

Today, I attempted to run away.
There was no wind to be felt as I walked: no cars were on the road driving past to produce any.
The long stretch of sidewalk I faced was empty, and the vacant, unkempt stores on either side of it contained no indication of recent life. Even the cracks in the concrete had no weeds sprouting forth from beneath them; they all had died long ago.

The air was hot and the world could be seen, but it made no sense, as the gray skies above revealed no sun.

I ambled onwards; my eyes would never stray from the path ahead, but would instead strain to see if the end of the road and the beginning of one new was near. I continued like this for hours; my breathing had become labored in the heat and sweat would trickle from my brow down the contours of my face when the beads got too big. Eventually, the last of the stores had been passed, and the markers on my left and my right had ceased to demand that those who walked forward turn back. I ignored the gradual barrenness as I progressed, and still the sidewalk continued on.

I never did reach the end of the path, though.
Instead, after my hundredth mile, I found myself at a crosswalk. At the other end of the crosswalk was a broken traffic light, from the pole of which hung, directly eye-level across from me, a small black box that illuminated the palm and outline of a five-fingered orange hand.

The light of the "Do Not Walk" sign never changed.
Still I'm there, waiting.

If people could speak to me and not expect an oral response in turn,
I'm almost certain I could spend the rest of my life as a mute

Queer, isn't it, that someone such as myself can be so fond of writing, can appreciate the merriment in laughter,

It's the extroverts in society that are rewarded for simply being the effortlessly open people they are; they receive the pay raise, the paramour, the invites to basketball games and late night drinks at local bars.

I, however, couldn't carry a conversation if it had two handles and Mike Tyson holding up the opposite end.

It seems these days that life must be discussed so that its beauty may be revealed.
I find that I don't have to, but that's what appears to be the problem, now, isn't it?

When encountering negativity, I find I still haven't mastered yet the task of thinking with a disciplined mind. Being capable of acknowledging this fact surely must be a small step towards so, though.

I wonder if a person such as myself, whose moral and social standards are self-set, has the right to point fingers and say an errand gone wrong is the fault of somebody else. Perhaps I don't; perhaps for such people, there is no such thing as "fault," but simply what is.

I've spent most of this week under a constant state of needless pressure that, I realize now, was not created at the fault of those around me, but rather, by my own hands. No fault can be placed upon others for my failure to breathe in deeply and accept that not all hard work will reap the benefits we seek, that not all things we wish to attain are attainable, and that not always our plans can be followed through to the end. This atypical air of impatience I've only just noticed I've had recently for everything, for everyone, I now believe has been nothing more than my ego's futile attempts to sustain this ignis fatuus of control and stability.. that and my lengthy absence from blogging, my lack of reflective thinking.

The loss of my hold on the patience I usually have at hand, as well as that frumpiness I'm not used to suppressing is, to me, just another demonstration, another reminder, of the impermanence of all things: things I forgot needed constant attention, and hopefully will handle better in the future.

Oh, the things one realizes when cooking rice in the kitchen.
I've still yet to find that peace with myself,
but at least, I think, I've found a tiny bit of it.

"You want to know who you are? Huh? You want to know whose son you are? You don't, I do, everybody does... You're the son of a thousand fathers, all bastards like you."

--The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

What a classic insult.
How could one possibly respond to that today?

The date, I can't remember specifically. It was a year or so ago: I was seated at the wooden tables beside the schoolside Vons' Starbucks, waiting for the time to crawl by faster for reason I can't remember. It was then that a dark, elderly, asian man shuffled by in house slippers to the gift card section beside me that then used to be there, but now is not.

He wore no glasses, I discovered after a few moments' worth of curious peering. The hand that gripped the cane holding the rest of his body upright shook slightly each time he leaned forward to reach for a gift card that never quite seemed to be the right one. His feet never rose more than a quarter of a centimeter from the ground each time he walked, and his thin hair stuck out from beneath a neon-pink hat that probably must have been worth something to him at the time and place where he had attained it.

I watched him for a few minutes, my interest in this seemingly uninteresting person growing as the number of cards that were picked up only to be set back down rose. Realizing at last that the one he wanted was not among those displayed, he shifted the whole of his body 90 degrees to the right, chin and arm raised slightly up so as to signal an employee for assistance.

His mouth opened without word, but rather, a barely audible squeak-grunt, so the first worker to pass him walked by without noticing that his attention was required on something elsewhere than the cardboard box he carried by the arm.

The second worker noticed him, but instead of stopping, mouthed a word that began with the letter "o," and extended his forefinger into the air to indicate a silent "one second, I'll be right with you". He never came back after that second. Or minute. Few minutes.

The third worker, this time, stopped, and asked him if he needed help. The old man replied in a voice that reminded me of fountain pens scratching ink on textured paper, "Membership cards?"

The man had come to Vons seeking out a Vons card, and instead, mistakenly went to the gift cards.
The worker chuckled, said that he would go get someone that could help him, and left.
I checked my cell phone clock every minute for ten minutes; the help that was promised never arrived.

My heart filled with sadness for the old man.

And so the small asian man, I remember, put one hand atop the other on his cane and hunched over with his head tilted to the left, waiting for someone to stop by and assist him. I watched him for a good while, pity aching my insides, when at last the time had come for me to stand and leave. I did, but not before casting a final glance by the door at the man whose head was still tilted to the left, waiting for help that I still don't know today had come or not come.

When I got home that evening, I called my boyfriend (then, my ex-boyfriend now). I felt this need to tell him about the odd old man I had come across earlier that day, so I did. I told him, "that man needed help, but no one came to give it to him."

and I remember the words Tim told me that, to this day, continue to bother me greatly:

"So, why didn't you?"



I saw a funny tree this evening.
Its thin trunk was curved, as if the weight of the leaves and branches at its head forced it to grow bending downwards.
The shape of the tree reminded me of the man and his old, curved back.