Sugar WallPaper

the dress i'm wearing right now, you know, is too pretty for a sunday alone. it's got sleeves like a kimono, all silk and flowers and pink and purple and black and blue and gold. it's like a starburst kinda dress, really. and far too pretty for running errands in: picking up new sheets, some concealer, a watch. motherfuckers would overcharge me wearing a dress like this for sure. but it's sunday, i want to be pretty and impossible and silk and and pink and purple and every other color i never wear. i want to be impractical and luminous, regal and naive, because when you're single you're entitled to those things, those deeply held and beloved eccentricities. this is me the way i love me and i'm going to wear this silk flower dress to please my silk flower soul. you gotta be your own jester sometimes, you gotta hold your own gotdamn court.

I apologize.

I apologize for thinking dependability was kin to loyalty.
I apologize for believing in the sanctity of your kisses
for holding the clay of your dreams
and falling in love with the imprint
my hands left on them.

I apologize for the very first kiss I stole
sweat glistening on your lips
and smoke in my hair.

I apologize for the pictures I begged you take
so I could remember
precisely
the height of your cheekbones,
the ghost of your teeth
as your lips drew back
into a smile.

I apologize for holding that smile
so reverent.

I apologize for my fists against your chest
when our arguments drove me to the limits
of my mortal mind.

I'm sorry for the bitemarks on my lips
when you loved me to brim
of my mortal soul.

I'm sorry for making up your bed
with regrets. For the memories that I loop
through my mind like copper pennies
through my fingers, that you would rather lay
stale and brittle
behind some couch cushion,some
dusty bedstand, some forgotten chair in the corner
of some forgotten room.

I apologize for not being able
to forget.

I apologize for leading you to believe
I was some sort of salve
when I'm only
a woman.

I apologize for believing
I was some sort of woman
when I'm only
a child.

But most of all
I apologize for casting my dreams
childlike
into the horizon

and staring deep into empty
hands, forlorn and wondering
why
i couldnt you pull you back
with the stars.

i'm a seasonal writer.

i write best (or most, rather) when the sky is gray and steady murmur of rain at the window.

what a difference a day makes.

another article to write today. running. eating. scrabble with some folks. laundry. ironing. a new list of new to-dos for a new week. new toothpaste, new toothbrush. all overshadowed by an upcoming return flight to the states, unexpected and exciting and heavy as a newborn placed on a doorstep.

it's unexpected because, as of friday, i had no plans to return to the states so soon. however, turns out my return flight needs to be made before november of this year, otherwise that trip is null and void. i had taken two weeks off at the end of july/beginning of august to visit my family in the philippines, but i thought it more sensible to return to the US in that time period.

dont know how i'm going to pay to get back yet, since i don't have a return ticket (yet). don't know who i'll see and for how long (outside, of course, family). don't know what i'm looking forward to the most.

i do know i feel this strange mix of elation that comes with the prospect of being with the people i love the best in the places i miss the most, and apprehension knowing that those people and places may have changed radically from my memory of them.

or that i may have changed.

I have this habit of living in books.

It started when I was younger -- part of the magic in books was the fantasy I created where I was every hero and heroine in kind. I became, in the turns and folds of the page, tragic, comedic, wise, hungry, foolish and lustful.

As I got older, and my love of words became more analytical and less emotive, I no longer saw myself in the work as I saw myself outside of the work -- the eager and captive audience sucking in words the way one sucks up air after being held underwater. It was then I built the habit of underlining and writing notes in my books. Because they were my textbooks, my guides and deliverers, and the simple act of circling a particularly precise word or underlining a perfectly turned phrase became my way of dialoguing with the work itself.

It's my way of saying, I'm listening. I understand. Thank you.

I just finished reading Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar," which I've meant to read for a few years now but only recently have gotten around to. It was one of those books I became completely immersed in, and found traces of myself in. A book that I appreciated as the analytical audience and the captive 8 year old who cant help but see her foot in every shoe, her voice in every line.

This is all gonna sound kind of funny, considering the book itself is about one bright young woman's descent into madness.

What I'm trying to say, more than anything, is that brilliant writers are capable of creating their own language -- and it is this language that resonates off the page and imprints itself in the caverns of your own heart. You become it, as it cuts itself into you.

Books like these, my traces are all over -- in pencil, in blue and red and black ink pens, in tiny dog eared folds on the pages.

I lived there for a time. And when my memory fails, as it surely will,

those marks will still be on the page.

somebody please remind me why i'm volunteering to watch a soccer game at 1 am on a sunday night?


oh right, because i can.

june has been a slow bugging month, but i blame the infamous lull of summer for that. i keep wanting to take some time to put everything in order in terms of bills, work, freelance projects and other various odds and ends, but it seems whenever free time comes up i'm sleeping (or catching up on sleep), drinking, at the gym or tinkering with my computer.

i need to vary up my hobbies a bit, it sounds like.

case in point:

after a long night of hammocks, beer halls, cop chases and post-celebration ice cream, i opted to stay at my friend's house for the evening rather than stumble through the streets of Bui Vien trying to negotiate a ride home with a xe om driver. it was a relatively early night, by my estimates, i was asleep by 3 am.

i tumble out of Astrid's house and into the heart of backpacker district at 10:30 am, wearing the same clothes i wore last night -- black tank, dark jeans, and towering silver stacked heels -- my bed head reminiscent of sonic the hedgehog, dried up eyeliner tucked into the corners of my eyes: i look like a half-price hooker being spat back up into the light of day. and, unfortunately, rather thank tucking the proverbial tail between the legs and making a run back to my apartment for a much needed shower and breakfast, i was forced to troll up and down the streets looking for an ATM. which, ordinarily, wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience.

but there's a little something called murphy's law, which essentially states that when you look like hell you will be on display for at least a half hour -- NOT finding money and running into at least two people you hadn't seen in a while and could guarantee would prefer not to run into you anymore given the absolute SHAMBLES they saw you in.

which is what happened.

ATM number 1 didn't work. So I go to ATM number 2, a block down, which also does not work. I run into a friend of mine at a coffee shop, who offers, kindly "you look like you've had a rough night." I walk in the opposite direction to get to an ATM. Three blocks. Finally get to a working ATM, which dispenses my cash in denominations far too large for immediate use (500,000 VND when i need 10,000 VND for a xe om driver). i curse my mixed blessing and then head back in the direction i came in to change my money. I walk into about 5 businesses, all of whom turn me away with apologetic head nods saying that they have no change to give me. I'm convinced that they're convinced I'm a hooker, and don't want to sully their hands with such risky business. I finally step into a convenience store -- the same convenience store housing the dysfunctional ATM that began this epic story -- and asked them if they could change my 500,00 VND note. They apologetically open up the register and show me a stack of small bills which do NOT add up to 500,000.

Exhausted, exasperated, and a shade humiliated, I lose all control over my cool and just begin whining. "You don't have anythiiiing? I just want to go hoooooooome. I've been everywhere (and here is when I started waving my arms around) and NO ONE has any money." ALl of which must have made for a pretty pathetic display, because the cashier turns to his coworker and urges him to go upstairs to bring me back some change to finally (FINALLY!) putting my funky tail ass out of my misery.

To express my undying gratitude and loyalty to the 24 Mart and its employees, I buy a bag of chips and some gum.

And yeah, I opted to stay in tonight.

my head feels in a muck.

it's been a heavy past couple of weeks, and i'm very glad that i havent had to work this since friday because there's no way i could have pulled all of this off. i've been spending like a madwoman, and this new recklessness with my wallet has everything to do with the booming static zooming through me.

i find myself taking a lot of naps lately. naps that i'm reluctant to get up from, because lying there between the grey of sleep and the grey of Saigon dusk, i'm not altogether sure where the next moment is headed, and if i continue lying down, i think, i can put things on pause just for a little while.

i haven't been to this sort of place for quite some time. but i guess it's part of slugs one takes when getting out of a relationship. you got to realign yourself. square up to this new reality, orient yourself to strange new stars pulling you in a new direction. all of this with a lighter load on your chest, but a heavier heart, and the white noise of cluttered and incoherent thoughts buzzing straight own through to your fingers.

i'm glad i have some books to keep me company. i'm glad i have a long train ride to nha trang tomorrow to mull things over. i'm glad there will be an ocean for me to look over, a million grains of sand at the water and falling underneath it to make one's problems feel...negligible.

when talking about aretha...it alwys comes back down to the voice. namely, how hard it is to pin down what it is in her voice that so captures an audience, that completely turns a song on its ass. its the timbre and tone, the earthiness yet airiness, the dancing of notes between gritty and ethereal.

it's so much more than just a "voice" thing, or the quality thereof. it's how the voice interprets -- really MAKES -- the song. aretha has it, perhaps, more than anyone else alive today. tina turner had it too (though i havent heard her peform recently enough to decide if she still has it). one could make the case that mary j. blige is next in line for the throne, but she is widely looked at as inconsistent and with a slightly inferior (though, let's be real, its still damn good) vocal instrument.

were i to pick any soul singer out there right now who exemplifies that sort of aretha mystique in her voice, that "can't-put-my-finger-on-it-but-damn-sure-in-my-gut-feel-it" when he/she sings, it would have to be fantasia.

now, the girl has put out some sub-par songs, in my opinion ("baby mama," anyone?) . the fact that she is a good singer salvages a lot of it from being out-and-out horse shit, but her songs, for the most part, leave something to be desired.

the situation completely flips, however, when she sings other people's songs (read: GOOD songs). i find her voice, like aretha's, works best in drawing out the emotional layers of the song. its usually in the slight and subtle choices she makes, how she runs certains words together, stresses others, and the (exquisite) tremble that runs underneath them.

i offer the following evidence/performance below, which has been stuck in my mind all week and, most likely, will continue to run through my mind tomorrow during my student's final exams. just a shame that she couldnt have sang the whole song...

dear internets,

it's been a while. we need to do a proper catching up session.

be back soon,

B

once every two weeks or so, i hope on a xe om to ben thanh market to pick up some flowers. i have a half dozen empty perrier bottles in my room (and two at my office) which i hold on to for the expressed purpose of serving as makeshift flower vases and bookstands (i have a hard time throwing such elegant looking bottles away).

i go to the same stall, where a middle aged woman sits deep in a column of flowers. because she sits on an elevated step, the flowers surround her like some sort of pollen encrusted throne, and she has to lean forward heavily in order to hand me the flowers i order by way of pointing.

she knows me by face, though not by name, because neither of us know how to ask for it in the other's language.

i usually pick daisies. bright, classic, and long-lasting, they contrast well with the green perrier bottles in terms of shape and color. they wilt slowly, courageously, fighting every tinge of brown that creeps up along their petals, defiantly holding their crowned heads high as the decay mestasizes in their stems.

but now i'm in a pom pom phase.

golden yellow fireworks. frilly white clouds. if you rub their tight, curled petals it releases a smell caught somewhere in between fresh laundry and a handful of apples. they're a memory blooming. an excited burst of a trumpet. spherical and lollipop sweet. my pom-poms are as defiant as the daisies, with the benefit of being genetically predisposed to longer lives.

the kind of flowers that are fucking proud to be alive.

i'm a staying in kind of girl, most of the time. at first, in the U.S., it was because i fancied myself a bit of a loner. then, when i came to vietnam, it was because i was a bonafide loner, i had no friends to speak off -- nobody to waste cheeky text messages on, clink beer mugs with, or annoy (and be annoyed by) to the point of distraction. and then...somewhere along the line...after the discovery of new friends, shared dinners, soccer matches and beer clinks, i became something else.

a person who sits alone not by personality default (or defect) or circumstance, but because i thoroughly enjoy my own company. thoroughly enjoy smelling like i do, dressing like i do, eating and sleeping and laughing and listening and fussing and spending my time like i do. a Full To The Brim person; madly, intimately, unapologetically herself.

a person who likes to take herself on dates, eat enough for two every once in a while. curl up in her own hands, marvel at the myriad of mistakes that made her.

you might be wondering why this is worth writing about. why bother parsing these feelings, these definitions i've created for myself?

i know it ain't deep, and it damn sure ain't novel, but i figure...if i didn't tell myself who i am, firmly, seems to me i'd be liable to take just anybody's ol' definition.

so i retreat deep into me on nights like this: suck in the flavors of my meals slowly; pore over my favorite books; shuffle through the mountain of snapshots i've taken since i've been here; Savor with a capital S; be so Full of Myself i don't have the room to be anything else, because that's the best part.

i'm reading one of my favorite books again, The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy. I'm finding just as enjoyable the second time around -- if not more so -- because I find myself paying extra attention to the language. The drape of it, the fit, cut and shape of it. Few contemporary books I've read (and few books in general) have matched the sheer ambition of the language, not to mention it's near-flawless execution. The language breaks as many rules as the story's characters, yet retains a certain dignity -- an old fashioned aesthetic that treasures God in the details.

Sometimes, after a particular passage, I sit the book on my lap and just stare into space, turning the words over and over again in my head -- letting them catch the light, contemplating their color, their clarity.

Sometimes, after a particular passage, I have to remind myself to breathe.

"'BUt we can't go n," Chacko explained. 'because we've been locked out. And when we look through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try to listen, all we hear is whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that we have won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that caputures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerers and despise ourselves."

- from "ThE God of Small Things"
Arundhait Roy

this week's article is about fidelity...and by extension...distance as well. it's inspired by my room mate, who had that lil punkass boy come around again last night. i don't particularly care that she's been cheating on her boyfriend in the US, but i do care that the shady mfer who slinks around here at night can't look me in the eye when i tell him good morning. i mean, we all know what you've been doing, we all recognize the fact that it's 8 am and you're wearing the same thigns you wore last night, might as well be cordial while you're doing your dirt right? dodgy son of a bitch, i tell you.


moving right along...

living overseas as an adult has changed my perception of traveling a bit. of course, i love to travel, but i don't know if i particularly enjoy the company of other "travelers." this may be because i've met enough that many resemble charicatures and stereotypes rather than bonafide, three dimensional characters and personalities.

there's a common misconception that traveling will somehow enlighten you, or that people who travel are inherently more interesting than those who don't. the truth is, i've met many a boring person here (and, no doubt, many a person here has found me boring as well). the most surprising of which (yes, you can be boring and surprising) are those who are open minded about exotic cultures and yet surprisingly judgemental of those who don't harbor the same "world views" as they do. It's pompous, irritating, and -- given a good amount of time with them -- achingly dull.

what makes someone absolutely fascinating to me isn't the places they've been to, the people they've talked to, or what pills they popped along the way. it's the people who can continue to find fresh and exciting things in the mundane -- the people who are travelers in their own hometown. They're the ones bringing that element of surprise to the table, the kind of people that transform the mediocre and forgotten into something new and invigorating.

some of these people have never left their own country, or their own state for that matter. but they are what you travel for.

[there are, most likely, a proverbial shit-ton of mistakes and disjointed-ness in this post. my apologies, youtube is at fault. i do promise i'll come back to clean up later]

i tried resurrecting my obsession with lauryn hill today.

went to the school several hours early to get my things organized. i've officially taken over raif's old desk in an effort to get all my materials in order. of course, to make it seem less like i was spending more time at the office and more like a fun sort of spring cleaning project, i brought my ipod along to lift up my mood.

i started and lingered on amy winehouse. then moved on to MIA and chilled with her for a little bit -- all the way until lunch. and then, probably because L is right next to M, sometime during my pad thai and iced tea i fell back into lauryn.

lauryn was an integral part of my adolescence. i imagine she was for every young girl, every young woman, hell, any damn body who felt themselves too old for their damn bodies. lauryn spoke to every old soul trapped in young years, every open heart fronting armor for a tough world. the loners in the crowd, the hopeful realists, the baters of breath: we listened to her because her songs were our worlds, articulated.

it was more than the dope lyrics, lyrics which singlehandedly fucked up every misogynistic/sexist paradigm that dictated a bitch (a pretty one at that) couldn't rhyme her way out of a pair of shell toes.

more than that.

lauryn had that cetain aretha to her voice. none of aretha's power, of course, but certainly an earthiness, a vulnerability, a rawness. a natural gift for interpreting a song -- hitting the right notes, lingering on the right words, singing soft when soft was warranted, belting when a belt was needed, her "uhs" and "yuh-yuh-yos" a don't-bullshit-me-metronome to her b-girl roots.

lauryn was an icon for us. icon not being a word i use loosely, not a word i would impart upon every jessica, cameron or angelina. icon not being synonymous with glamour or beauty or money or oversized sunglasses or tabloid sales. icon having everything to do with power; an icon being that image that liberates you, that someone who loosens the shackles from your bones just in the act of being themselves. lauryn was that.

and i am fully aware that this is sounding like an elegy because it some ways it is. the artist that lauryn once was is gone, as is the young girl who sang lauryn's songs everday in front of her mirror. i still bate my breath for her, grabbing on to every new song, performance, or video i get wind off, but as anyone who loved her before knows...

the old lauryn has left the building.

the artist i see now cries during shows. her voice cracks, pauses, falters. she fucks up the lyrics. she drops the notes. even when she speaks, the delivery of her poems -- too fast, a mish mash of words and sounds in staccato. a breakdown of motives and thoughts, motives and thoughts. lauryn, stripped down.

thank God for the music. thank God that in three minutes and thirty seconds, we can relive the lauryn she was and the people we were when we first heard her. lauryn the icon, the artist who was once the prototype for young, sensitive, aching, intelligent, defensive, easy, roughneck, so-goddamn-human-it-hurts girls everyhwere. three minutes and thirty seconds, we recall, we relive how she once set us free.

buried underneath layers of clothes, a sheath of makeup thick as memory, the mic as a shield -- has lauryn finally liberated herself from us? perhaps she has.

someone who has given that much, i believe, is entitled.

and if i can wish anything unto her, i would wish that she loves the lauryn she is now -- the artist, the mother, the wife, the businesswoman, the provocateur, the icon, the fighter, the ruin, the image, the home, the voice, the song, the note, the beat, the beginning, the middle, the bittersweet end. i hope she loves every God-given inch of it.

because i love the me i am now; a fact that i owe to the me i was, a me that she guided.

gracefully, passionately, thoroughly, she did.

had a spill on a motorbike last night via raif's going away party. thought we'd send him off in style, and what night isn't complete without wine, beer, good vietnamese food, and the motorbike version of slip and slide on a desolate freeway?

here's the damage, minor scrapes on my left hand and my knees -- not bad for my first "accident."





&





let's see how they hold up in my pilates class in ...oh...2 hours.


On a more fragrant note, i awoke to the smell of these in my room.




It's a garland of jasmine, something picked up via Raif (bless him) at about 2 am at Tam Tam from a little old Vietnamese lady. Even though this is a smaller type of jasmine, the sight and smell of these flowers always awaken a deep sense of nostalgia in me for sampaguitas -- a larger type of jasmine sold in the Philippines by lepers, street kids, and whomsoever happens to habitate a certain street corner or busy median. The flowers have religious undertones in both Vietnam and the Philippines. Here, its association lies with Buddhism and can often be found in temples and pagodas; there, these white flowers drape the necks of Virgin Mary statues and Santo Nino figurines.

The consensus being that they must smell like something sanctified.

In my closet, on the other hand, they've managed to chase away the smell of a $21 cigar which had been ripening in one of my drawers for several days. But, that's a whole 'nother story.

i hadnt realized i was so goddamn prolific a blogger..at least on myspace. looking through my old blogs since 2005 (over three years! daaaaaaaymn), i miss the candor and detail that i once used to describe my ins and outs. that is, all the way in, and all the way out. it's an honesty and an intimacy that i haven't been able to replicate here, knowledgeable as i am that i'm going to open this blog up to any number of casual acquaintances -- not just a close knit writing community.

the self-censorship has hampered the quality of the material, which is quite disappointing. i don't want something i wrote when i was 19 to be more polished and emotionally honest than something i'm writing at 22.

so i'm altering my approach to this site. no bleeding hearts or spilling guts, but more blood than i've let pump in these words. more flesh -- pock marked and scarred and stretch marked to accuracy.

the flaws-and-all-me who, for all her bull, is the one who tells it best.

how did i celebrate cinco de mayo, you ask?

why, by hurriedly eating about 3/4ths of a mexican pizza before class. that's how.

sigh, at least i got a whiff of some good ol' guacamole.

a taste of cai dau beach

i don't typically write articles about places i've been to since i've been here, mainly because i'm not in any frame of mind to write a bonafide travel article, but i feel differently about hoi an. it was such a perfect getaway, and i'm so enamored with the place that i'm already plotting a return trip.

the town is relatively small, with a strong french colonial and chinese influence. seeing the blend of those two cultures in the architecture and overall aesthetic of the place was refreshing on the senses. silk lanterns dot the night, in place of the neon and flourescent lights of ho chi minh city. the tailors are incredible as well, with hundreds of fabrics, colors, and prints rising from the floors to the ceilings of each quaint shop.

there were small grey alleys lined with large cobblestones, the kinds of alleys i was enamored with in Italy, quiet, discreet, mysterious alleys that would suddenly burst with life in the early morning -- a house converted into a curry shop with hungry customers filling the street in plastic chairs and tables.

there were silk kites and rivers and bridges and temples. the outline of dragons and fish upon gates and rooftops. lucky chinese letters painted in black on dusty yellow walls. the stains of hundreds of floods smeared on the sides of buidlings.

and there was the beach. a 1 km bikeride from my hotel, it was where i spent a majority of my daytime hours, a wide and for the most part unpeopled beach framed by palms and purple flowers that popped out of the sand. i was thoroughly raped for my dong by the ladies selling their wares on the beach too, mostly because their company was so enjoyable i didnt so much mind paying the double the price for a pack of mentos or a bracelet. a few of them so clearly just wanted to talk and sit for a while, so we did just that. a couple of them even ran beer runs for me, so i could avoid having to pay 40,000 VND for a bottle of Tiger that would cost 14,000 VND in the city.

it's just the sort of place that's a perfectly tailored fit, and i want to chronicle it and remember it as it is now, and to continue to experience the place as it is in this moment, because -- like so many other things in thie country -- it will surely change.

i have a flight in less than 5 hours, and i'm on live journal because...? oh right, because if the internet were crack i would smoke 8 glasses of it a day, which is a bit of a false statement because the internet IS crack, but moving right along...

i'm going to submit some blogs to this upcoming publication an internet friend of mine wants to put out. the collection is, essentially, a compilation of blogs from an assortment of bloggers (which is really fun to say aloud, by the way). what's going to make submiting a pain in the ass is the fact that i've been so scattered with my blogging over the past four years. if i could hazard a guess i would say i've had 5 - 6 different venues where i've self-published -- including 2-3 blogger accounts and a myspace blog. i've long since forgotten the urls, usernames and passwords to a couple of those blogger accounts (shit shit shit) but, thankfully, there's some fairly decent stuff on the myspace i can work with.

the moral of the story is: either consolidate your shit or remember your shit.

and on that note, to the bed i go...and then on to hoi an.