my sense of humor...

has not transformed in the slightest.

baby lei apparently gave her mother cute things like this:

note the presence of an expiration date in the bottom right corner.

a prayer request slip i filled out at the christmas eve service last night:

fresh kicks... to the nuts.

i know i know, it's 2:25AM, and you need to be up to cook for brunch tomorrow at Asifa's.

i'm not making excuses. sleep is one of my truest loves. from what i've gathered in my short twenty years, love requires reciprocation in all senses. sleep has reciprocated in wonderful ways lately, my dreams have spun silky outlines of good company: the kind with bright eyes.

as i packed my wallet with fresh birthday money to endure holiday shopping, i fully immersed myself in the consumerdom (and i mean that in the exact way kingdom connotes totalitarian rule by the king) that makes the US of Armadillos' armor so tough.

whilst roaming through Ross, watching lines pile behind the cash register back to the dressing rooms with the overstocked knickknacks and great deals (that for some reason are much more popular in Hilo than anywhere else i've been), i sat down on the shoe bench. in my lap sat a pair of Nike high tops, glittering with outrageous colors, size 7-and-a-half. and as my well-practiced middle class fingers fumbled for the price tag, i knew that no matter what it said, they were going to be cheap enough.

cheap enough to come home and tell mom about how excited i was they were so cheap and wonder if she needed anything from Ross so she'd throw them on the conveyor belt with her stuff?

yes.

cheap enough.

it slapped me in the face all of a sudden. i am a thief. not of my mother's generosity, not of my pride, not of my own bank account, but of the concept of need. i have taken need hostage and disguised it as want in virtually all aspects of what i buy. my personal wants have become needs, thus trampling over my poor mother's needs too.

and what do most say? what makes us human, what makes all of the diversity within our species come together? our needs. need for food, shelter, and love. and here i am, hijacking the beautiful ties that bind us for these nike high tops.

perhaps this is where we should really evaluate what type of free market we are not only a product of, but are creating in our lives.

something to checkout if you think any of it's interesting:

Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping

or more so... the movement called culture jamming.

a day of gratitude

more like days of gratitude. why we only have one holiday to celebrate thankfulness, i have no idea. we need it at least once a month, don't you think? i digress.

once upon an august day, i met someone that changed my life. i've been waiting until this assumed day of gratitude, secretly, to post this.

it's easy to argue that someone has changed your life, since in the grand scheme of things, life is about the relationships you make and break. maintenance is i suppose a component of all that, but the truth is, they come and go, often times going more quickly than they've entered.

college for me isn't and won't ever be about getting my degree. college is a four-year crash course in relationship building and breaking. so to me, with so little time to absorb the individuals i meet, it's become like a strategic vacuum of the beautiful pieces of people that i've had to run all over the place.

no one really plugged that vacuum until i let you into my heart. time has slowed with you in my life, and i suppose i can't really be more grateful. i've been a place for so long where i can't get past the fact that college really is just about the selfishness of getting what you can out of it and then leaving it with a mortarboard toss and a picture of you and a dean you never knew. on the contrary, you have changed that feeling for me. i don't feel rushed to discover and retain when i'm around you. i don't dream further than the future in which we both seemingly find trivial, when the dream is here, in this moment, ready to envelop us if we let it. i'm incredulous at your ability to meet someone and have them welcome you below their surface in literally one conversation. to know so many so intimately, i couldn't really guess what it really feels like to know someone in your heart. but i can guess that i've become one of those people you know, or it sure feels like it.

flaw (n.) : a mark, fault or imperfection that mars a substance or object.

you've given me this: that the only faux pas one can commit is the inability to embrace the flaws in oneself and others. i suppose the concept of the flaw that you've redesigned in me is that it is simply something to be appreciated over an asset.

this is Rachel. she's kinda boy crazy, too flirty all the time, too sexual when inebriated, and consumes way too much diet coke. but she's one of the most phenomenal human beings i've ever met.

you're Beautiful, don't let anyone or anything (including yourself) lose sight of that. So it goes, I don't feel a need to fill the silence, to withhold my thoughts, to hesitate in asking for what i need, to be anything other than what should be forgiven by default: human, while in your company Miss Drummond.

details in the fabric

where threads of me weave their way through the ins and outs of their perception, i become a fabric within your eyes. eyes that may never see every facet, but without hesitation accept the entire cloth.

meet me in the space behind your heart where light can't find us. i know that then you will say we should get to know each other, for real this time. disregarding all of the places we've been and where we will be, the moment is caught with a butterfly's net, bent on devouring us creating. we will speak words that free not only us but that which inhibits us.

i prefer your heart over anyone's so far, it only pumps four letters through the networks of people that surround it.

l for lefties and their growth in a right-handed existence. for being forced out of what's natural to become something they aren't because their numbers are less. for the oppressed.

o for the offer. the offering to the holy trinity: compassion, curiosity and cultivation. to offer the benefit of the doubt for those seemingly undeserving, to ask the questions necessary to do so and to cultivate the gifts found in others to assist them in their hammering out a sense of self-worth.

v for vicariously living, unabashedly through others' experiences that you may never achieve or understand, but fully enjoy the palette of emotions and lessons learned through the relationships you believe in.

e for elves. ever hard-working, not for the man, but the concept of keeping magic alive. miracles can happen is what they preach each and every day, and that without them, we really would be here for nothing.

pumppumppump. if only i could hear your love all day, the air would be too full to inhale all of its wonderful smells of hopes and dreams and exhale the similar elements.

what good do loops and corkscrews worth of emotional roller coasters do for those trying to push through the already apparent sandpaper of being human? we all wonder if the gift of self-awareness is indeed one that we ever wanted in the first place. perhaps ignorance of ourselves would have saved the planet, or perhaps saved her soul from what it is now.

bruised, beaten, but never surrendering to the hand she was dealt, when given no choice but to become the player in a game of high stakes. it was seemingly too much money at risk for someone who didn't know how to add yet, in present tense, can we really ask her to grow up now?

this is about both of you, and neither of you. it's about the people. the abolishment of the person. the destruction of the singular and the building of the we. you are not alone as you pump all of that love. let me be alive within you.

overwhelmingly-so, the light in me honors the light in you.

namaste.

Today I am grateful for...

My parents.

For being people who let me choose my way.

They let me:

Quit.

Try.

Dress real weird.

Talk to strangers.

Eat Kraft macaroni and cheese and Lipton chicken noodle soup every day for three years.

Through them, I know that:

I am loved.

The world is a tough place.

I want to explore the world.

I am beautiful and intelligent.

I will always believe that people are good.

I can talk to them without fear of judgment.

I will love with my whole heart, unashamed.

They believe with the utmost confidence that I'm ready.

They are not embarrassed by any part of me and never have been.

Being honest is admirable, no matter how long it takes someone else to understand that.

Keeping my word when I make a commitment is one of the most important things I can uphold.

I have too many friends who don't know those things, and too many parents who don't care about that fact.

Thank you for my life. This will always be my most precious gift, and I can only hope to give you something as equally powerful some day.

An exciting announcement! (For me anyway)

Beginning my birthday this year, I will be embarking on a Journey with a capital "J". The capital J is there to represent one of my best friends, Jennifer, who gifted me the book This Book Will Change Your Life.

On my 20th birthday this year, I will start in day 1 of the book and continue until my 21st birthday, December 16th, 2010. I will be blogging each day of that year about my Journey through each page in a separate blog on this account.

The reason I have not started yet is unbeknownst to me. But, the time to decide on a launch date has arrived.

P.S. Lei will most likely be studying abroad this summer.

P.P.S. For those of you who are anxious to know what can be found within the book, I flipped to a random page and read as follows: "Day 330 Today kiss someone where they have never been kissed before".

For you.

You commented that my blog doesn't get sentimental enough. "Who wants to read who Lei already is: open for all the world to see on the surface? What really cranks below the surface very few have witnessed." Well, perhaps that's not somewhere you'd like to go.

A piece for you, my critic:

My darling Lei,

You spoke quietly into the stars to no particular direction that you will never need someone to love. I stood next to you trying to silently agree, though all I wanted to shout at the light that flew over in the shower was that I wished it was me you needed.

In comparison, knowing you intimately is like falling through a dream and landing on a bed of feathers instead of the pit of conscious fear that jars me awake when I make a dispassionate attempt of love to anyone else. That the places in which I most want to dwell are between the layers of spirit and skin.

You have the same effect on my focus that seafoam green does. What perplexes me is how you don't see this. When our days shared come to mind, I know I should leave those days to themselves, let them appreciate their own beauty. Instead, my mind always chooses the sadistic path of recounting every glance.

I have become a storyteller that can produce the kinds of fairytales that have no ending, just an infinite sphere of my world without you in it.

Truly Yours,

Lei

I Know What I Did This Summer.

Painted my entire body orange.

Was amazed at how Black is hard to spot in this picture.

Attended a fancy party.

Flashed my friends while falling as my bikini bottom strings got caught in a hammock.

Tried out for America's Next Top Model

Caught one fatty crab, and let it go again.

Tried to convince Dobby to stop beating himself while Dumbledore and Moaning Myrtle looked on.

Proceeded to free Dobby. (As Moaning Myrtle looked on)

Got my motorcycle/motor vehicle permit!

Learned how to crawfish. And how to feel terrible about ripping their little bodies open.

Rest in Peace, James Longwood, Sr.

Is ABC really as easy as 123?

It came to my attention today that I missed 12:34:56 PM on 7/8/09. I frivolously discarded the only time this will ever happen in history.

Perhaps in response to this scandalous mistake at 2:16:39 AM on 7/10/09, I will declare the Roman Calendar insignificant in my worldview.

Feeling better already. I think I've been reading too many nihilist novels.

Thank you for your comfort food responses, a follow-up blog will ensue quite soon!

P.S. I recently happened upon the best video I have seen in all of non-Roman time:

Kittens inspired by Kittens.

A question for my hundreds of followers...

What's one of your favorite comfort foods?!

Mine is obviously string cheese.

Just another weekend.

Home sweet home.

Phew. Three days and 4958.5 miles.

I left Harrisonburg with little attention to the bittersweet closing to my first year of apartment-living because I was too busy trying to remember to empty the fridge out of spoil-worthy foods and not forget anything for home and pride. That said, we cleaned out Taco Bell's beef and tortilla supply as I recklessly abandoned by pescatarian inhibitions on the way out of town and took to an evening in Fredericksburg. Highlight: The men fresh out of their mason meeting in the bottom floor bar of the Kenmore Inn flaunting traditional colonial redingotes and tights with far-from-fake à catagon wigs.

My pride virginity was lost to a beautiful sunny day and the most idiosyncratic gathering I have ever seen in Washington, DC. Never before have I really felt tandem with the activists I so often preach about. It is one thing to know there must be people fighting for queer rights, but entirely another to encounter--in the flesh and screaming at the top of their lungs--more than the twelve or fifteen I'm used to at JMU. As corporation after corporation paraded past with queer employees and free throwouts, consolation flooded my heart; the blood leaving it shooting not just oxygen, but hope and change to my fingers and toes. Just in time I suppose, for dancing the night away in half-nude sexual freedom.

Rolling in at 5am to Fredericksburg, I woke at 10 to hit the pool for some quality time with Marjorie, fam, girlfrann, and enough sun to darken me four shades. Departing quickly for Washington-Dulles International Airport, I flew through security and over the U.S. to stop in L.A. for an evening of mini-pizzas, Pizookies (ice cream-covered giant cookies) and an old friend.

I finally knocked my terrible impression of Southern California the next day as Katrina and I went on a pleasant bike ride through the heart of L.A. and more tanning and swimming at Loyola Marymount University's pool.

Boarding a plane that afternoon to Kona, Hawaii, I considered running back through security for the phone charger I left, but thought better of it. Topped the three day trip off with a bottle of Merlot under the Hilo rain with all the people I have missed the most. Picture on the left taken at Hilo Farmer's Market.

Innerference

A friend of mine (who is celebrating her birthday today... Happy Birthday! Without your birth my life would not be the same!) has taken to choosing about the endless varieties of craigslist offerings to really find what it is she has been looking for: uncomplicated, gratifying, self-esteem pumping hookups. I'm well aware "hookup" always fails to connote any real meaning, but for the future of whatever it is she decides to do with these explorations, we'll leave it in ambiguity.

So far, she has received: free Dave's delivery from a previous hookup and most importantly, what I would refer to as the puppy serum for relationships. Where in this unique situation, each party can resolve to whatever identity they see fit for themselves and the person with which they are connecting with; the relationship will linger just long enough to put both through a complex wave of flirtatious and optional-eternal role-playing.

Am I brave enough to try it? Absolutely not. If anything though, all of the chats we've had about these craigslist conquests have showed me what I truly appreciate about this friend: this kid is not afraid of anything, and most importantly, not afraid of acknowledging what she needs and getting it for herself. Do I wish I had this trait? Absolutely. How many of us really can articulate our needs, when we need them?

I leave with a relevant t-shirt, entitled Innerference taken from Blend Apparel.  One of my favorite clothing companies, run by who I'm sure (if I ever met them) would be some of my favorite people. Perhaps if there was just a bit more communication between the brain and the heart, the world would be better off.

Tassle Pasties

Tippytoeing towards Richmond on Friday afternoon, yours truly expected a weekend of sappy movies and competitive card challenges with my dear Emily. I might add here that I am always looking for people to play with, any and all directions. I digress. The thought was not made in vain, for this was precisely what happened that evening, but the rest of my trip worked beyond my supposition...

After witnessing the never-lacking-in-beautiful-people-and-beautiful-vehicles: Fast and the Furious 4 for $2, the renaissance-themed Byrd theatre presented a wonderful mix of slightly nutso homeless people (though how many of us really can say we are sane?) and clusters of VCU students killing time on a Friday night.

The next afternoon we spontaneously perused the canal system, running about downtown Richmond with curious glances towards historical signs and the closed (though very easy to break into, it seemed) Virginia Holocaust Museum. All a lazy afternoon leading to an extremely sultry night...

As we searched Richmond.com for something exciting to do, Godfrey's called with something called The Swagger put on by Sweet Tease Burlesque. Woo. I admit that it was the best show I have ever witnessed for $10. The women, stage names: "Eros", "Scona", "Spiked Punch" and "The Muse" (pictured on the right). Once they stripped to their lingerie, I was caught between glaring guilt and absolute adoration for not only these women's beautiful bodies, but the confidence with which they carried themselves in what surely--as I could imagine myself trying to take knee-highs off all sexy like--were not easy or smooth tasks to accomplish.

...Photo taken from Sweet Tease Burlesque's myspace...

As I watched the tassles hanging from their pasties circle 'round and 'round like some kind of hypnotic and erotic parody from The Graduate, I asked to no one in particular if they change them. Do the tassles come pre-attached to the pasties? Or are they individual products simply matched by the interpretation of the artist? If I hadn't known what theatrical costume work was before, I know now. From here on out, I vow to observe the combinations of the tassle and the pasty textures and colors to elucidate the persona of the character in burlesque fashion. Enough said. Afterwards, "Boom Boom Pow" and "Day and Night" took me and Em directly to the hardwood.

Sunday finished a wonderful weekend with a trip to Belle Isle, a swimming area along the James River that boasts a ton of cool things to see and wondrous (and a bit shaky) bridges to cross. Applebees, Dairy Queen and a drive back to the 'burg towards the sunset topped off what I hope was just the beginning of adventures to come, Summer of 2009.