Tag Archives: humanity

1. There is a war going on. Over there and over here. Inside and outside. Will we ever be good, warless?

2. Where is home?

3. Safe from something. Safe from some things.

4. It’s almost growing season. As if we haven’t been growing enough lately.

5. What do you still believe? Is there anything left of the old you? Look at all of us, changed forever. Here we have modern nostalgia.

6. We still have spring and sunshine and old flowers growing new leaves – for now.

7. Be free.

8. Soon we’ll have more, and much less. Look at everything you have in this moment.

9. All of this is the same. We have never, ever changed.

10. Fist bump.

You and I Shall Share a Coffee and a Grand Plan

November 25, 2020

Musings

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The grounds swirl at the bottom of my coffee cup, proving gravity exists as the sun rises. You won’t notice them as you sip your sweetened caffeine, don’t worry. This is European Style I tell myself. In reality it’s probably poorly done, but it makes me happy pressing down the plunger – a sense of satisfaction. Today, I did something. I pressed a plunger down and I made some coffee that tasted pretty good at least to the standards of how it usually tastes when I make my coffee which is pretty much every single time I ever have coffee.

This year has dragged on and drag-raced away. Somehow the plants have kept growing and the windowsills always need to be dusted again. Families have felt deep loss, countries have faced harsh realities, the world has taken a collective breath and held it, trying not to breathe on one another.

As the sun comes up and the level of coffee in my mug goes down, I think about power. The power of the wealthy. The power of kindness. How hard it is to be kind when you’re powerless, with no resources to your name. How easy it is to be kind if you make the choice, despite how the world has shown itself to be.

The very best people I know struggle to live the way they want to. The most deserving humans whom I love, suffer. Talent, goodness, and kindness are left to swirl down the drain along with the remnants of my morning coffee. These are the things we don’t care about.

The sun is all the way up now. We see exactly what we are. The lights are on bright as we string up more lights for this holiday season, as we fill and refill our mugs full. We know what we are, you and I. What shall we do about it?

Isolate

April 24, 2020

Musings

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We should stay inside. Let the other animals have back their planet. Surely we have had enough of it already.

Our time is over. It should be clear to us now what it is we have done here. Let’s wait a century, see what happens, see what can improve.

We do not deserve the trees. We do not deserve to travel. We do not deserve to see more than what is viewable from the windows of our earth-constructed homes.

Let us cease to roam. Stop taking more than what is essential. It is not good. It is very likely bad.

So let us stay inside. We can listen together as the birds come back, chirping loudly on “overgrown” trees. Let the grass grow tall, be overtaken by “weeds”. Let the natural plants come home as we stay inside ours.

We do not need anything more. We have taken too much already. We are surrounded by it. It is killing us and everything.

The wolves will roam the streets. No man will force them away and out. The roads will crumble, return to dirt, return to forests. The Earth will heal itself, given time.

It is a small thing. We are too big. Enormous. We rules the skies, the seas, the highest mountains. We took it all. We should return it. We have more than what is necessary. Humans must learn to share.

last symphony

July 21, 2017

Musings

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She is not allowed to love anyone else but me. Even after two years. Even after months of awkward struggles for conversations. She is not allowed to move on. She is not allowed to get over me.

He sends me music like he did years ago like that will mean anything. It is falling on deaf ears. I will never hear you again.

I often wonder what part of humanity makes us like this. If it is biological or social. If she wants me to keep loving her because of ego or loneliness or mating possibilities, or all of the above. And I wonder why I wasn’t good enough in that moment, and if I would be now, or later, or never. And what makes that be so, is it biological or social?

At least it is all interesting, this life. Even the terrible parts. Even the boring parts. It has all been done before but never by you. It is old and new at the same time. And it is different and the same. Like the love she has for me. It is still there. It is still secretly, secretly waiting. But ends come. Ears stop listening. Another one is coming soon.

Music plays in my head. It is some classical song my brain has dredged up from somewhere.

I am thinking of that day. Classical stories and classical music and classic heartbreak. It will never be the same. That is good and that is bad.

I don’t know if all of this is boring and wasteful and pointless. Isn’t everything? It might be good. It might get better.

Maybe it is mortality. The end. The no going back. The finishing of some young story-line. The realization she doesn’t want you anymore, or ever again. The death of some thing, some chance, some hope.

“Sushi stop is good,” he said. But I don’t like sushi. And he doesn’t like me, I think, while my brain writes it’s own versions of classical music. Who’s to say it isn’t?

friends and the Friends theme song

June 30, 2017

Musings

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It is a small thing. It is not as big as you think it is.

Imagine a wedding-type ceremony, with two people standing next to each other in front of a room full of people. Imagine them promising not to spend their lives together, but to never speak to each other again. Imagine them walking back down the aisle, all the people watching, and from that moment never interacting again.

This happens all the time, in some way. It is a small thing. It is not as big as you think it is.

There are more fish in the sea, says some mother figure in my mind. I agree with her, staring off into the darkness of my bedroom at midnight on a work night..

The years have only taught me that the people you love now will become shitty and/or get tired of you or start to hate you.

I can hear my upstairs neighbors watching Friends. The theme song gives it away. It reminds me of childhood and family and sitting on a big green lumpy couch in a tiny living room.

I am beginning to understand why people get married. After some amount of failures and sadness and shitty people, they find someone to watch Friends with at midnight on a work night. And they think, not this one, I won’t lose this one. Not this time. And they involve a ring and a room full of people and a nice cake. And if they promise in front of those people and with that cake while wearing the rings, it means something. It means they can never leave each other to watch Friends alone.

I can now name the feeling in my stomach. It was apprehension. Knowing that not much good could come from anything, that sometimes it’s too hard for people to understand each other, that they won’t listen and can’t comprehend. That they have to protect themselves and always believe they are right. That it is so easy, now, to push a button and make it all go away. To not have to face anything difficult, to not have to fight for it, so easy to be apathetic. To be angry and stubborn and foolish and stupid and young even though we are all getting older.

It is too much and it is nothing. Another person gone, another death. More time to meet more people to eventually grow sick of, or love, or both.

It is some ending that needs a mark. Some little death that needs a tombstone. To be remembered. In memoriam.

We are all young and old and stupid and foolish, and we will always keep walking away and walking toward something else.

rabbit, rabbit

June 21, 2017

Californiacation, Musings

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He thinks he is a rabbit. Small, young, jovial. Walking through fields, past lakes, hiding in caves. He thinks he will never die. He wants to look for something but doesn’t quite know what it is.

It is a big world. A huge, beautiful place. And even more, the universe, but one planet is more than enough for most of us, for a lifetime of adventures or of hiding in caves.

I have been old for many years. Since I was 10, knowing I was no longer singular. And now, 26, four or five gray hairs on my head, a candle flickering beside me, burning away.

I see you sitting there and growing old. I see your armchair is comfortable with you.

I know there are many different types of stories. What I don’t know is what kind mine is. How can it plot out a path if I keep moving? What if it never forms to anything? I’m not running away, just searching, running towards.

I had a dream last night that I was in school. I got good grades. I showed my grandfather. He said something like, “good, you can be a teacher.” And I replied with, “maybe when I’m older.” And he laughed, implying I’m there now.

When does youth leave you? What day? When do you become old and no longer young?

Count the days. Count the lines on your face. Count the moments of happiness. When does it happen?

So far it has been mostly the same. Wonderful days and days we wait out. Bunker down to hide from them. Seek the weekends. The two of seven days that belong just to us. The freedom.

I hear a door shut. I can hear my neighbors upstairs. I don’t know them. I never will. I am leaving and I will never have said hello.

I sit at the traffic light often, waiting, almost home, or almost to work, or almost to somewhere. I watch people drive by, alone, their turn to move. No more waiting. Still ignoring everyone except those who might cross their path.

We made this world. It has grown up with us. We raised it, taught it how to behave, how to drive, how to wait. We showed it what to care about, what not to. Together we ignore the man standing in the middle of the road with a sign. We tell ourselves he doesn’t need us. He’s a trick. He’s a lie. We can’t love him like we love our mother, we’d never get home to her. Maybe it’s human. Maybe it’s not.

I am not done searching. I haven’t found anything yet. All I can do is keep going and hope the world doesn’t ruin me. It hasn’t so far.

I love you.

the rain in los angeles

February 19, 2017

Musings, Topics

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“The trees are too tall, they block the moon,” says my bosses’ son from the backseat as I drive him home from school. It is a short and poignant thing to say. “They are pretty though, aren’t they?” I ask, and he agrees. It was a simple observation, one that led to a conversation about the moon and space and sunlight and how trees wouldn’t be very good to eat. It was a short and quiet moment in the busy, loud life of a three year old.

In some writing class in college, my professor told us about how his brother had been a forester in the pacific northwest, and how he had fallen from a tree and shattered all of the bones in his legs. I wonder if that guy thought trees were too tall or if they were beautiful or if he only did it for the money.

It is raining here in Los Angeles. It must be good for the trees. There are puddles on my balcony. The streets shine. I sit and listen to the rain and wonder if it all comes from the ocean, and how long it will take to get back there.

My job is terrible and dull and it makes the people who stay there for years terrible and dull. Sometimes we sit around a table and talk about other people’s money. Last time this happened I remembered sitting at a table in Seoul, staring at a tiny Korean girl refusing to eat her lunch. Those two situations were very different but very much the same. It is all some kind of strange humanity.

Someday there might be someone who loves me more than someone else’s money. Someday there might be someone who loves the trees because they are beautiful and not because they can be cut down and sold for lumber. We will grow tall and strong together in the rain.