never up for long.

At the peak's precipice, there is a sharp drop that falls off into a dry valley. You take one step and you've fallen in.

scenic world.

This song made me feel better:

The lights go on
The lights go off
When things don't feel right
I lie down like a tired dog
Licking his wounds in the shade

When I feel alive
I try to imagine a careless life
A scenic world where the sunsets are all
Breathtaking

paint the black hole blacker.

Los Angeles was surreal this weekend. The congested freeways, the sunshine heating up the sidewalks, the busy cafes and restaurants all felt like part of a movie set constructed over a place where my life used to happen. It is strange returning to a place you once called home only to find that you no longer belong there. I was merely a visitor this weekend. And despite the negative connotations of being a tourist and an outsider, I have never had a more positive relationship with that city than I do right now.

I found it beautiful the way the heat dried out my hair minutes after stepping out of the shower or a swimming pool (I was in three different swimming pools this weekend). I found it comforting that the heat turned sticky at night. The food tasted better. The streets seemed cleaner.

So three margaritas, one lemonade, one frappuccino, one gin and tonic, one ice blended from Seattle's Best, two Tecate's, and 12-15 glasses of water later, I have imbued my old home with a nostalgia I never really believed possible.

Perhaps all you have to do to appreciate something deeply is to make it disappear from your life for random intervals of time. I have learned that lesson many times in the last four years, but I never realized I was learning it until right now.

in a glass house.

In many ways, this summer takes me straight back to a simpler time. Though I constantly wonder where my next paycheck will come from, I have no real concerns here. It feels like a continuation of my college life - even my high school life - in that deep inside myself somewhere, I feel like I will return to the safety of student loans or the safety of living at home while studying calculus and biotechnology (that was me in high school, yeah). It is hard to wake up to the fact that this is not the case. For instance, today I spent the morning running at my high school track and then going to beach. My friends and I buried each other in the sand and screamed when the icy waves grabbed at any skin above our ankles. My guy friends played frisbee, and I fell asleep with the sun hanging directly above my head.

The other night in the Mission, Saleh and I chain smoked and got into a heated conversation with two people sitting beside us on the long picnic tables outside the bar. The guy was 32 years old, and he was still dating wildly impractical people. The girl said she was 28 years old, and she complained that she was too old, that life was passing her by. It made me so upset. First, I told her that was bullshit. Besides the fact that she actually looked 23, women without children shouldn't feel their lives are over by the time they've hit 30. Of course, she simply looked at me with her eyes squinted, angry, when I told her I was 21. Of course, my protests have no effect on her; I have yet to reach an age where I can honestly say my life is not where I want it to be headed.

But I could see a little bit of myself in her. I could feel her fear, her disappointment in herself. So while my summer of repeat childhood is nice, I know this cannot last. I refuse to sit at a bar when I am 28, complaining that I am old. I don't plan on having everything figured out by then, but I do at least plan on being satisfied with my own life choices. So I'm giving myself a deadline of mid-October. If I am not happy here, I am going on a working holiday. And that is that. Because part of growing up is realizing that your endless list of choices are merely arbitrary decisions that lead you down new paths and you lose yourself and then you begin all over again. If you ever feel old, you start over new and stop the self-loathing.

pictures of yore.

Smoke rings linger in the front seat. You exhale and the circles come spiraling out of your mouth and make pillows in the air by the rearview mirror. I suddenly remember when your memory used to mean something. The ashes on the tip of the cigarette crumble and disappear. I remember how we shared a pillow and the cold tips of our noses touched, the moon shining, my head spinning. The tip burns red for a moment as you take a breath and more ashes form as you inhale lightly. Now it only seems funny that we ran down the streets of Berkeley, you holding my arms in a dark alley, my nose running, your friends growing impatient. I laugh at my naive longing now because I can see outside of myself. At the time, my whole world could be summed up in one memory.

It's strange to me how I look at past versions of myself and want to run to her rescue, protect her from what she will inevitably face. I wonder if many other women do the same. And if my life is simply meant to be a progression, then why can't I understand who I have been and who I have become? The girl who longed for your fingertips on the edges of my lips no longer lives in me. Now, I couldn't care less about whether or not you stick around. Come and go as you please; I plan on doing the same. That is my philosophy. And in this new philosophy, I have no room for romantic idealisms because the reality of my own mercurial mind has become more real than anything else these days.

The smoke rings clear, and I am in my bedroom, falling asleep, thougths all disappearing, and the only face that ever enters my mind is my own.

sunlight piercing through black curtains.

If it comes to a point where you can't stand your own words, where love poetry transforms into farce, where you hate the way you rationalize your decisions... well, then, I think it's time you swallowed all your dumb little romantic notions and bought that plane ticket.

She wishes it were so easy, the way those words flow from his mouth, the way his mind must work in order to shut her out. She wishes she could take it back, sharing so much of herself. But then she realizes he knows nothing of her past. He doesn't even know the names of the people who have made her into who she is. He doesn't know the quantities, only vague qualities that she hints at behind juice glasses filled with vodka and orange.

His intransigence, his pride, who knows what explains any of it. But he knows it isn't worth waiting around for. She knows it isn't worth regretting her youth.

The back and forth goes forth and back until the phone calls stop coming and the memories fade and she's sitting on the grass in front of her high school, thinking of the regrets she had back then and how the regrets she has now only keep piling, keep building, keep chipping away at her strength. She is afraid they will reveal the girl behind her hard exterior. She is afraid of sharing the past with anyone, afraid of moving forward without pieces of her past, afraid to engage in the present for fear of regretting the past in her future.

writer's block.

I am lost and the world is huge and I don't know what else to say.