One good pick-Up line

Liz, and I walk into, let us say, a local hang out spot and this giant of a man, over six feet tall, comes up to miniature little Liz.
This was their conversation:

"Wow, you are tall."
"Yep."
"Do you play basketball."
Pause, rising tension.

"No, do you play miniature golf?"

I think Liz should have married him.

The Phone and the German

As I was sitting at my desk at work, atop this wooden round stool that will eventually flatten out my butt, the guest phone rang. The guest phone is right across from me so I get to see everything that happens and then write about it.

So the phone is ringing and ringing and since it doesn't have an answering machine, the yellow handle keeps jingling and jingling for about a straight two minutes. Then out of nowhere my little German friend just appears from God knows where in front of it, looking at the phone, then at me, then back and forth. He is about five feet short, super skinny, long long hair that he has in a ponytail and a baseball cap, a long beard neatly shaved along his jawline, he is wearing a Spalding jacket, and these amazing circular glasses that seem more like goggles that not only helps improve his eyesight but have this amazing magnifying effect for me. So there is goggled little German between me and the ringing phone and this is the conversation that ensued when he asked:
"Can I pick it up"
"Of course, it is for guests"
"But who is it??"
"I don't know, maybe it is for you"

there is a long pause, he turns to me and maybe it was the goggles, but his eyes got huge and he yelled,
"Maybe it's a sherpriza!!" in such a heavy German accent and he started laughing and laughing and this in turn made me laugh and laugh and then he picks up the phone, continues laughing and then just hangs up.
Laughing still, he walks away.





Sometime I forget why I want to leave this place....

"Getting Ready for a Weenie Roast"

says my boss passing by into the kitchen as the French girls walk out the door, letting the cold air slam into my face.
The Brazilian is on the phone wearing his green Hurley shirt. I think it is some sort of unspoken rule that Brazilians always wear green, the dominant cultural color. Even better is the fact that he is talking on a yellow phone. It must be some important conversation because he is hiding himself in the corner, guarding the words from seeping out into the open.

It has been about a year since I first began working here, this hostel, this zoo for humans, wandering through life. I came here with such excitement, honestly, wanting to meet some cute international boys. The flair of it all has died down, significantly, so much so that I have become indifferent. I hate being indifferent but when you go to a zoo, you admire the animals always knowing that there is this bullet-proof plastic between the two of you so that you dont get too close, close enough to get hurt. It is no different here, except that I have built my own plastic wall and I am now questioning if it is bullet-proof, man-proof.
My life has become a transition from one zoo to the next and though i see myself with this plastic barrier, perhaps I too am part of this zoo that I observe so keenly.

I have so often wanted to write about the experiences here, the crazy people that I have met, the nerve of some arrogant fools, and the humility of some pretty beautiful souls that stray here once in a while, not often enough. I have wanted to compare this place to so many things- a submarine, an amusement park, cactus garden, youth camp, and so on, but for now I will stick to the zoo. For maybe I am that one monkey that keeps getting transferred from one zoo to the next because it simply does not fully adopt its new environment, never fully fits in. It might next get transferred somewhere exotic and spicy, unforeseen that it is not the environment, it is her that will always be this foreigner monkey among the locals. She is a lost cause to a zoo keeper looking for a profit, because none of the visitors pay to watch her watching them. Dump her? Send her back to the wild? Yes, let us see how she fares in the wild. You have high hopes you say? Shall we place a bet on it because she seems too naive for me. Let's see. She sits in waiting, thinking about her life, awaiting her departure, always awaiting her departure. We will take her up north and set her free. She is too selfish to see life outside of herself. Yes, yes I am. I have not yet learned to trust fully, to let go, to breathe. I have become too consumed watching others, always observing so much so that I have lost sight of something grand and beautiful and I just can't figure out what that is.


Life is temporary and its temporality is best enforced here, with people on "vacation mode" always and forever. But to put aside my cynical attitude that I so easily adopt each time I see the usual coarse of events: the same pick up lines, the same look, the same brush on the arm, same exact complimenting..., I must say that from behind my bubble of a desk, I have learned a lot. I have learned a lot about myself, about how I react to certain people, about the fact that everyone wants so badly to be loved and desired and the only problem is that they find such different ways of showing it. I learned that I tend to see myself as more experienced and wiser because I do see it everyday and because I read and write a good phrase or two....but I am not, not in the least bit. I am still young and have much to learn about this world and about people.
I am learning to respect people again, though it is interesting in this place, this place where weenie roast is posted from the ceiling and people genuinely think that sex is "it". But still, I am learning, growing, trying my best to love.

But I do have to go now because my bubble can only protect me for so long, I have to look a little busy, I have the autobiography of Malcom X sitting next to me, and plus, I have to go help prepare for that weenie roast.

A letter to Liz on October 17, 2007

and I quote myself:

Don't you know that I always have something to say? Always! I'm a blabber-mouth and I will only end when this page runs out, when I have finger cramps, or when a catastrophic meteorite extinguishes my existence. So there you have the pathetic blabbering of an unidentified and Lonely Soul. I like to capitalize Lonely Soul to make it more powerful, more of a vague identity, who perchance I am. Dorothy Parker said it best in her sarcastic and bitter attitude towards men when she wrote that, well, pretty much, they should burn in hell. I don't want to go quite that far, but I understand her frustrations because an unwanted human is the saddest thing you will ever find. Mind you, I don't feel like that so don't prepare to get excited...I am not going to cry. Boys don't merit a tear from mine eyes, my precious and selfish eyes- they don't spare tears for useless pity.




My wish for you is that you fill these pages with the gut of your pain and happiness with excessive exaggerations and bittersweet contradicting words. Because life is contradictory and why should we pretend that it is otherwise. Your beautiful heart needs to weep to your hands which will in turn pour out onto these pages- these organically printed pages that await your conscious awakening. Oh, that was beautiful. So now I think that I am some sort of a writer or something. Well, I am not. I am just a body like any other that has learned the art of phrasing and categorizing words so that they juxtapose and sound all smart and shit. Ha, it is fun to write that. Shit. I feel like it is stealing the 5 cent candy from Fast Break- you should not do it but it is only 5 cents and it tastes so good melting in your mouth! So worth it and so forbidden. Speaking of forbidden- I think that I in general, am bad for my health- so says the Surgeon General. I think I simply need a rising hill that echoes and I will climb that hill, take off my shoes, climb the tree that is strategically perched up there , and then with my hair down and my arms outstretched embracing the wind I will Yalp, yalp for all of the damned feelings, for all of the confusion, and the "lostness" we all feel, some more than others. For all of it. Then I will climb back down, sigh deeply and consciously, put on my shoes, and continue through this life, wide awake. Yep, that is precisely what I will do.
Ze END

I just called to say...

That my cousin is having a baby. Yikes. A baby. After the excitement subsided, I realized that it's a baby. A whole human life about to enter our family. This little baby I pray for because it has no idea what awaits it. I hate calling the baby an it, but alas, for a few more months it will be an it, an unknown synthesis of egg and sperm. Oh poor baby that will enter this crazy and hectic world of ours, a world full of hunger, poverty, mechanical humans trained to not think for themselves, a world of materialism, globalization, communication, and what other big- worded catastrophe there is to name. I pray that this baby who will one day grow up will fight for freedom, question injustice, and cry for beauty and love. I guess that is a lot to hope for for a baby entering a wealthy family in Los Angeles but nevertheless, this is what I ask for and let that be all.

So as this baby begins to grow in my cousin's wife's belly, I send out this plea to all babies thinking about stepping onto this same earth that I walk upon:
A plea to not just live, but to be alive
To not be desensitized to the kind of love that is shown on tv
To open your hearts to pain and mistakes for they are sure to follow our humanness
Open your arms to relationships, to vulnerability and to people for as often as they will hurt you, they will also love you the most besides God.
Don't judge yourself too harshly and don't judge others, reserve judgment for those who get paid to do that.
I say all this because I have not yet learned to do them well, because these are my goals and I wish to pass them on to you.

Love
Listen.
Love.
Be patient to those around you.
Love.
Respect everyone.
Above all, love.
For that is the first thing that we are shown when we are born and should remain with us daily and eternally. We are created to live for ever. Our lives begin on this earth but that does not mean that they end here.
Welcome...

In the Life of a Spanish Tree

My dear old friend Raleigh is living in Spain. She took a picture of a Spanish tree and now I want to be this tree that lives in Spain, changing with the Spanish seasons, watching and shading the Spanish people and guiding their lives with its silent beauty. In the life of a Spanish tree, I will learn to be silent and patient and most of all, gentle. I will call myself Yoana, as a tribute to my Spanish friend who is about to return to San Sebastian. I will weep when my other friends are torn down or are not strong enough to support themselves. I will laugh when others shed their leaves before me and look naked compared to my majestic coat of orange leaves. In the gloomy seasonal days, I will allow the gentle rainfall to hold onto their last moments on the tips of my branches, fearing that when they fall to the ground, they will lose their individual contribution to the world around. I will allow those pesky ants crawl around and feel comfortable and I will let eagles rest on my branches. Though there are no eagles in Spain that live on trees as such, those are the birds that I want to welcome- eagles, the only birds that fly to a storm, fly directly to it and then soar above it. I want to be a shelter to them so that when the storm comes I can watch them soaring above, guiding it with my eyes as a proud mother. Yes, that sounds lovely. I will be this tree and will live on.

Steppenwolf

I am reading Hesse's Steppenwolf and as an opener he said he doesn't particularly like younger people reading his book because they misunderstand what the Steppenwolf really is and what it is really about. He was going through a sort of mid-life crisis as was the person who made the cover of this paper-back book that I got at the used book store in a very gay-friendly neighborhood. The cover looks like a mixture of a Michael Jackson Thriller and a science fiction Anastasia. It is just THAT good. Well Hesse was saying that people in the beginning stages of their lives (which I suppose I am still in ) will not truly be able to understand what the Steppenwolf was, what this wolf of the Steppes was, the half wolf half man that is never fully part of society and wanders around never feeling fully human, never fully wolf. He will always outcast himself out of society on his own accord because he loves his freedom but it is this freedom that leaves him all alone. I am 22 year-old girl, and somehow, I think I am my own Steppenwolf in my own world. Though Hesse would not like this, I do because it makes sense to me, more sense than much of what I write or say about myself. For I think that I am of another time and another place and fell into this place that I must now accustom myself to. I am trying...

"These persons all have two soul, two beings within them. There is God and the Devil in them; the mother's blood and the father's; the capacity for happiness and the capacity for suffering; and in just such a state of enmity and entanglement towards and within each other as were the wolf and the man in Harry.
And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternals and as a happiness of their own."
Hesse