Posts in category "Thoughts"

She Treads Softly

Had I the heav­ens’ embroi­dered cloths,
Enwrought with gold­en and sil­ver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread soft­ly because you tread on my dreams.

—He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, William Butler Yeats

She knows how much I’ve fall­en for her.

And by giv­ing her my heart in such a way, she’s shar­ing the bur­den. The last thing she wants to do is hurt me, and she thinks her­self self­ish for want­i­ng to be held just so. But I know what I’m get­ting into. I know the risks.

So I told her not to hold any­thing back, because there’s noth­ing she can do, no bound­aries we can define, to make me love her any less.

There’s no point in deny­ing our­selves the joy of what we have now. To be lying next to each oth­er when we talk into the ear­ly hours of the day, bod­ies pressed against one anoth­er while the morn­ing light wash­es over us, is worth any chance at being hurt. We can deal with the inevitable lat­er.

So she treads soft­ly, on me and my heart.

And rests her head on my chest when I hold her.

Home Free

Thumbnail: Darren outside
Thumbnail: Tazo Berryblossom white tea
Thumbnail: Sausages, egg, and toast
Thumbnail: Dexter
Thumbnail: Bubble tea parlour
Thumbnail: Bubble tea
Thumbnail: Cigars
Thumbnail: Korean soup
Thumbnail: Dexter the cat in window
Thumbnail: Mall people
Thumbnail: Tempura roll
Thumbnail: Teriyaki beef
Thumbnail: Sliced orange
 

I left when the sun was set­ting. Along the way, the road stretched out infi­nite­ly before me, as if to say that I can always get away, and there is always more to go. The tree line danced and waved across the hori­zon, even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pear­ing with the sun. Then the lines of red and white in each direc­tion guid­ed me all the way to Darren’s house.

In it are lit­tle things from the house I grew up in — some can­dles here, some cab­i­nets there — that my par­ents did­n’t want after the divorce. So strange to see innocu­ous objects from my child­hood in a dif­fer­ent set­ting.

It was the first time we’ve been com­plete­ly sober togeth­er since we were kids. No alco­hol, no weed.

I found out a cou­ple things I would­n’t have known oth­er­wise:

  • My dad start­ed dat­ing some­one. He is cur­rent­ly sin­gle again.
  • He has a dance floor at his house and a nice car. This is typ­i­cal of my dad, who loves his toys.
  • My moth­er is still inse­cure.
  • My par­ents still see each oth­er, but not alone. The cur­rent social rule among the group of par­ents, is that you can’t invite one to a par­ty with­out invit­ing the oth­er.

A week­end of sweet indul­gence, late nights, and inti­mate con­ver­sa­tion. No one under­stands my rela­tion­ships the way Darren does, because we both share these quixot­ic ideas about love. It was so com­fort­ing to be able to express myself on these things with­out hav­ing to explain my under­ly­ing feel­ings, as if some­one could tru­ly under­stand me, espe­cial­ly impor­tant in this cur­rent phase of my life.

It made me real­ize that home isn’t where the par­ents are, some­thing I used to believe1. It’s an idea.

A com­fort­ing place you can go to get away, where you’re com­plete­ly accept­ed for who you are.

  1. I’m not sure exact­ly when I stopped believ­ing this, but it was prob­a­bly some­where between the time my par­ents got divorced and I stopped talk­ing to my mom. [↩]

Tai Chi/Taoism Paradoxes

Another cor­re­la­tion between the phys­i­cal expres­sion of Tai Chi and philo­soph­i­cal ideas of Taoism is the ubiq­ui­tous exis­tence of para­dox­es in both. There are con­tra­dic­to­ry answers to many ques­tions, and at the same time, the answers are very sim­ple (a para­dox in itself).

An exam­ple from Tai Chi is the pos­ture of the p’eng shape. If you’re too stiff, you can be pushed over eas­i­ly. If you’re too relaxed, you can be col­lapsed eas­i­ly. People make the mis­take of think­ing that you have to be one or the either — that you’re either resist­ing a force or let­ting it move you — with­out under­stand­ing that there exists a “some­where in between”. It’s dif­fi­cult to explain how some­thing can be struc­tured and relaxed at the same time.

A Taoist exam­ple is the idea of wu wei, or “action with­out action”. Practically speak­ing, it’s the con­cept that you don’t do any­thing that isn’t nec­es­sary, and by remain­ing reac­tionary you let nature (or the inter­ac­tion of Heaven and Earth, as Taoists roman­ti­cal­ly say) run it’s course. In doing so, “noth­ing is done yet noth­ing is left undone”.

Last class, my teacher said “Tai Chi is easy, that’s why so few peo­ple do it well.” His words remind­ed me of verse 70 of the Tao Te Ching.

My teach­ings are very easy to under­stand
  and very easy to teach
yet so few in this world under­stand
  and so few are able to prac­tice

The answers remain elu­sive and dif­fi­cult to explain because they must be felt, as in Tai Chi, or expe­ri­enced, as in Taoism, a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the para­dox­i­cal nature of both the ancient Chinese mar­tial art and phi­los­o­phy.

Lysergic Bliss

u.make.me.happy

There’s a ten­der­ness that reach­es deep with­in me, and bur­geons forth to paint the world an intox­i­cat­ing spec­trum.

It’s a world where every song is a jour­ney, every chord is more dul­cet than the last, and I don’t want to, I need to dance.

It’s not a sim­ple feel­ing. There’s so much to con­sid­er — new real­iza­tions, unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry, ques­tions of fate, unre­solved pro­pri­eties, inevitable change — that it’s all a mix of emo­tions unlike any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. But who says that life has to be sim­ple? All I know for sure is that I love her, even if she doesn’t love me the same way.

And for now, I’ll wear this smile like my heart on my sleeve.

A Reason For All

The crooked become straight
The emp­ty become full
The worn become new
Have lit­tle and gain much
Have much and be con­fused
So the Sage embraces the One and becomes a mod­el for the world

—Verse 22, Tao Te Ching

Yesterday, I woke up from a nap at four in the after­noon. Usually, when I wake up from a long nap, I feel grog­gy and uneasy, but this time I was bright and rest­ed.

When I went out­side, the rain had stopped. It washed the bird poop off my wind­shield, it filled the air with the lin­ger­ing scent of clean­li­ness. In my car, Becky start­ed singing in the stereo.

I had You Broke My Heart by Lavender Diamond play­ing here

And every time she hit me with the words “cav­al­ry of light” in her waver­ing vibra­to, I had to sing at the top of my lungs along with her, my voice crack­ing, my dig­ni­ty left behind me.

I can’t even remem­ber the last time I’ve been so hap­py.

This morn­ing, I was run­ning late for work. But by the time I got to the car, the sun had been out long enough to warm the breeze. I could roll the win­dows down and let the air in. The traf­fic made me even more late, but it let me take my time too. It gave me the chance to enjoy Lenny croon­ing to me about how true love leaves no traces.

It’s like I’m wait­ing for some­thing to go wrong, because I’m not used to things going this well. But noth­ing’s going wrong. Things are be work­ing out. Everything has a rea­son, no mat­ter how small or triv­ial.

Taoist the­o­ry says that sur­ren­der brings per­fec­tion. Don’t force any­thing. Allow things to hap­pen, and they’ll nat­u­ral­ly bal­ance out. Perhaps I’m final­ly believ­ing this, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing it.

When things are going bad­ly, you’re not real­ly behind.

You’re just wait­ing for the good that would­n’t be pos­si­ble oth­er­wise.