what happens when i mess around

i was playing, and once i'd made one character, i discovered it only took a few minutes to create more! i'm afraid i didn't have time to do everybody i know, but clearly, i had fun.

let's start with me, amidst my traipsing


layce, in london, looking fabulous


nichole. she's about to experience some serious cold.


m-b, catalina style.


ed, doing what he does best.


a.c.


kirsten. if i could have added a baby in here, i would have.


oh, nicole


my brother, an intellectual ninja.


and my favorite... the furious white boy!

my best friend.

and me too.

(p.s. the bracelets really say "don't settle for less" but it was between "settle" and my shot that says "for less." so pretty much i had to decide whether i wanted to represent us as having low standards or as prostitutes. low standards, it was. hah.)

when sad, i find it often works to buy something you don't need

okay, just because i bought myself an ipod nano doesn't mean i'm not sad that chris left today. wow, double-negatives.

it's been about 6 months since my ipod died, and i finally broke down and bought myself a replacement. i figure... i could get 80gb, but i don't bloody need 80gb. come to think of it, nobody needs that much! this thing carries 1,000 songs. i could listen to it all the way from ulaanbatar to moscow and probably still have space leftover. i think i'm set.

today was a little weird. i went to the jade market to pick up my awesome stamp, engraved with my chinese name. i could only stay a short time, though, because all the green almost made me suffer a seizure. bought travel guides. slept. did my laundry. walked around because the sun was out. shopped. bought my nano.

and spent an unusual amount of time laughing.

i said yesterday that i really have nothing to complain about. which is funny, since i spend a lot of time complaining. or maybe reflecting. i don't know! but truthfully, all things have culminated in God putting me right here, and that's bigger than anything i ever imagined for myself.

but seriously, i just laughed today, for a lot of reasons. as a going away present, chris wrote me a letter, crammed with a lot of things, one of them being advice. and one piece of advice in particular about dating. encouragement, if you will. a reminder that i'm really good at selling myself short. as i normally do, i took the things he said and thought about them. sometimes i conclude that he's a jerk and proceed to tell him so, but most of the time, they're just harsh truths. i went online, where little reminders about my past dating choices popped up around me. so i thought about it. about the circumstances and what it did to me and what i became. and i just laughed, because it actually hurt as much as it did at the time. at the absurdity. not that all my choices or the fact that it hurt at the time were absurd. but a few, yes. and that, to me, today, was funny.

remind me to stop selling myself short.

that one time

"...think it'll be all right if i never leave my apartment till i'm old?"
-holly, p.s. i love you




a recent topic of interest has been pain that makes you wish that you could die. i'm not talking about physical trauma. i'm talking about disembodied pain, the kind that is so far inside you that you wish you could go tear it out, though you wouldn't know where to start.

i mean, people die for physical reasons all the time. something inside you stops working, and thus, you stop working. it may or may not hurt so much that sleep or unconsciousness or maybe even death are preferred. but for many, if you lie there or do what you're told long enough, that pain goes away.

but we explored this a little further: can you ever die of a broken heart, of actual emotional pain? most have heard the disembodied voice, the one from that indefinable part of yourself that screams that something is very, very wrong.

i spent a summer incapacitated. i went to work because i had to, ate because i had to, and planned my semester because i had to. and once in a while, i even smiled, because of the people in my life. and though i kept on moving, i can attest that there were days, weeks, even months that i woke up and didn't want to move. that i wished that i could just lie there as long as it took for whatever thing that was broken inside me to heal.




right now, i feel that way. i wish i could go to sleep for a few days or weeks, and wake up when it doesn't hurt anymore. i'm spent. i just want to call into work and ask if i can come back in a week, after not moving for the next 7 days. surely, it can't hurt that much then. i go to sleep to stop from hurting and wake up feeling like i hadn't slept at all.

can't i, please?

i wasn't meant to be cool

"too cool for school."
or so the saying goes.

a few months ago, chris walked into work, and proceeded to tell me about his awkward morning. on his way to pick up breakfast at a local sandwich shop, he saw a pretty girl and waved to her. moments later, he sneezed, producing a profuse amount of mucus in the process. you'd be surprised by how discolored and thick your mucus gets in taipei.

to curb the potential pointlessness of his tale, he explained to me his immediate thoughts while he furiously searched for a tissue. really, he said, i was thinking, cool people don't do that. do what?, i asked, sneeze? not just sneeze, joy. sneeze so that copious amounts of snot are emitted from their nostrils while they catch it in their hands and still try to save face, he replied. it's not about the sneezing, but about how awkward i looked doing it. think about it, joy. cool people don't do that.

his reflection on being cool did little more than make me laugh at the time. that is, until wednesday.

i was on my way to work, when i got road burn i haven't felt since that day with the truck. the day that left gashes in my hips for months, marred by the gravel. every day, i live in denial that i have another 10 hour workday ahead of me. i leave home with (sort of) sufficient time to get to work. really, "sufficient" is defined less by how early i leave and more by how gloriously reckless my bus driver is. it just so happens that my alley faces directly to a bus stop. unfortunately, my alley lacks crosswalks, and taking a crosswalk just to get to the bus stop would take me at least another 5 minutes. so to sidestep it all, i wait until traffic is clear, make my way to the center divider, then cross the second half of the street when it's (mostly) clear. on very rare occasions, i have a clear shot all the way across. and wednesday at approximately 8:20am, my friends, just happened to be one of those days.

it's common knowledge in taiwan, though not in most of the western world, that you can cross a street even if motor scooters are coming because there really are no set lanes, and they can easily go around you if you get in their way. i was hurrying to my bus stop when the scooters just started barreling down wenhua lu in my direction. i can make it, i thought to myself, though there was one scooter moving faster than the others. i hesitated for a second: do i slow down or speed up? going at my current pace will cause a collision. if i hurry, i can probably make it, and if i stop altogether, i risk the onslaught of traffic that follows the scooters about 5 or 10 seconds later. it was as if the crazy side of me, the one that compels me to do things like move to non-english speaking places, and the practical side of me were in combat. and for once, the practical side was just as strong. half my body obeyed its usual master, while the other half followed my practical side, remembering how little it wanted to hit anything again, EVER. and in the process, i completely bit it in the street. my legs slid out from under me. i lost my shoe. fortunately, most of the scooters weren't moving as quickly as i'd expected, so i had lots of time to hobble off the side of the road.

and i realized in that moment: cool people don't take dives onto gravel in the street. a cool person wouldn't be bleeding profusely from 4 open wounds in his or her foot right now. and cool people wouldn't be shouting profanities to themselves right now about how much that son of a bitch was hurting.

i did clean myself up once i got to work, and all seemed fine. i used to roller blade as a kid. i've skinned myself more times than i can remember playing soccer or with my brothers. i never bother to take these things seriously. so i cleaned my wounds, covered them, and went about my business.

and all seemed well, until today, the day after cheap hippie kickboxing. it was the hardest workout we've done in a while, but i thought i was fine. my wounds seemed to be scabbing, and they didn't really hurt while i was working out. i got home, showered, and cleaned myself up, only to wake up the morning after in excruciating pain and with a completely swollen foot. for the first time EVER, i spent my whole day at school barefoot. it hurt too much to wear my slippers. i couldn't go up and down stairs. i hobbled from place to place, and was probably crankier than usual. and my kids kept asking me questions about what happened, which just sounded plain silly when i omitted the part about jaywalking, since that's never a good thing to advocate to a group of 6 year-olds. since then, i've taken medication for the swelling, which seems to have improved and generally tried to keep it clean, though i'm still limping.

when i become such a wuss?

oh, no. no, no, no.

"how do i love thee? let me count the ways..."
or so the saying goes. according to browning, anyway.

i apologize in advance if this blog is too graphic.

2008 marks my 3rd year of no valentine on valentine's day. well, i did go on that date with drew last year, the day before valentine's day. but that was a first date, and i'm pretty sure we only picked that day because it wasn't as awkward as actually going out on the 14th.

the nice thing is that i didn't really notice this year. i'd like to think that this is mainly because i've grown a lot. a year of singleness in taiwan really kicks you in the romantic gonads, so when the options are complaining or growing, i pick growing.

but actually, this has more to do with the fact that i was sick on valentine's day. sick, sick. very sick. more sick than i've been in at least a year. and i don't know why. for some reason, my body woke me up at 3a.m., as if to say, "hey! you feel like crap! you don't want to miss a moment of it."

so for the next 4 hours, i couldn't sleep, i couldn't sit, and i couldn't walk. it all made me dizzy. so, i thought to myself, in my misery, maybe vomiting will help. and this is true, perhaps it would have helped. for those who don't know, vomiting, as i perceive it, is fate worse than death. every bit of it repulses me. and over the years, i've learned to control all manner of vomiting by strained mind over matter. and surprisingly, this works on most vomit-inducing situations: hangovers, motion sickness, watching others vomit, death marches on mount rinjani, gnarly taiwanese food, vicodin, being run over by trucks, dormitory life. in fact, i can remember the last time i got the stomach flu, and it was at least 12 years ago. this was also the last time i ever threw up.

but to give you all the magnitude of my illness, i prayed for the ability to throw up whatever it was that my stomach could not handle that night. prayed. and tried. for over 3 hours, i heaved. but nothing. forgive me, but i was under the impression that things of this nature came naturally. like putting your arms out in self-preservation. or procreation. nobody has to teach you to do this stuff. your body figures it out on its own. but apparently, it's been so long since i've thrown up, that my body has actually forgotten how to do it. either i've successfully trained myself in all manner of conscious and sub-conscious defense against regurgitation, or i'm somehow challenged. i like to think the former.

long story short, i managed to stumble into work for the afternoon class sessions, but was barely able to stand through most of the periods. i suppose this is why God invented things like story time, and especially valentine's day, as i just set my kids to making valentines and writing letters for the latter half of class. i've never missed a day of work, but i've spent most of the past 2 days sleeping, or wishing i were sleeping. and when not doing the previous things, just wishing i were dead.

God bless valentine's day.


p.s. i found this picture, and words really cannot convey how amazing it is. chris told me that some of my pictures make me look like i'm "special," but i can guarantee that none of them come close to his face in this one.

i remember a song that says "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." and by that i mean, let's not forget love comes in more forms than romance, people. when i taught my kids about valentine's day, i reminded them that there are a lot of people to love, in a lot of different ways, not just boyfriends or girlfriends. and i'm thinking, sometimes, that's the best kind of love.

a very merry un-christmas to you

"hallelujah!"
or so the saying goes.

over the years, i've heard a lot of dissent about christmas in the states; about how it's too capitalistic, too consumer-driven. as a culture, we've been bombarded with story upon story about the true meaning of christmas, which always, in the same trite manner, drills into our minds that we've completely missed the point.

and all this is true.

but now i just want to tell western culture and all the proverbial grinches of my generation to stop bitching.




as an american, the idea of a non-existent christmas has always been unfathomable to me. our entire culture embraces it. from christmas music, to holiday specials, to decorations anywhere and everywhere, to nativity displays, to christmas trees at the mall, to starbucks' red cups, american society whole-heartedly welcomes christmas. in fact, i like it, because, for a short time, everybody is happy. albeit more-than-usually stressed out, but exceptionally jovial.



cut to culture that barely acknowledges christmas' existence. the teachers at my school, in fact, all worked on christmas. we had the option of taking the day off because, from what they understand, christmas is sort of important to us. so we did. and they tried feebly to bring the christmas spirit into school, but nobody understood the decorations or the color schemes or the music or talk of searching for the true meaning or even WHERE SANTA CLAUS COMES FROM! december 25 passed by like any other day here. nobody stopped or said a prayer or took a moment to reflect. they just kept moving, leaving us foreigners paralyzed, immobile, completely destroyed by a holiday spirit famine. christmas was void of all the things that make it so wonderful back home. it's like i'd slept an entire month.

but at least i had the day off. i went to a christmas party with chris and some of his friends on christmas eve, where we played yankee swap with white elephant presents, read the nativity story, and sang christmas carols. and ate mongolian barbecue.
i read cards sent to me by my thoughtful friends back home. i don't think they realize how much a few words lifted my terribly downtrodden spirits here.
i opened presents from my family, full of scarves and gift cards and perfumes and DVD's with all my favorite tv shows, because the only thing for me to watch here is cnn, bbc, or movies with subtitles.
chris and i had a christmas breakfast and exchanged gifts. and while i don't think i'm any good at giving presents, he wasn't exaggerating when he said he was, as my jade bracelet is glorious.
i ate myself into a food coma with rachel and annie on christmas day. we shopped and talked about home and took pictures and soaked up what little holiday spirit could be derived from our environment.


so even if you think christmas is misunderstood, i can honestly testify that it is infinitely better than no christmas at all.

"so then he was all 'i love you' and i was like, 'please...'"

"count your blessings."
or so the saying goes.

i couldn't think of a title, so i wrote this. because chris and i are clever/bored/immature, we find it amusing to write captions on handouts we get at work and school. we then share said captions with each other and have a laugh about it... i like to think it keeps us from imploding. anyway, this was his caption from my workshop. i still think mine from last week was better.

though i spend most of my days as a teacher at least mildly stressed out, i've come to realize that i'm so very happy here in taiwan.

once in a while, i have a devastatingly long week here. sometimes it's due to a bad class or sometimes we just have a lot to do, but this week was one of them. i had the sounds and letters competition, report cards, MY workshop, kindergarten handbook, and a final exam in chinese all in one week. i'm a bit tired.

while you could see the effects of my stress on my face, i've gotten better at managing it. i think this is because i'm learning to dwell less on those things which wear me thin and more on things which make me happy. this week's blessings include:
1. a warm sweater
2. fresh fruit
3. guotie
4. not failing my final, despite having not studied
5. kicking ass at my workshop, thus affirming my awesomeness
6. not kicking ass during g3, thus tearing down said awesomeness
7. chris (the less nar-nar version)
8. & julien
9. christmas music
10. k1
11. peanut butter and chocolate sandwiches
12. yellow watermelon
13. tonight
14. coffee
15. talking to layce
16. rain
17. just discovering that aro's coming to visit

count your blessings.

i haven't decided

"honesty is the best policy."
or so the saying goes.

i remembered a song i used to listen to in college. and it's a bit trite, but i've seen a lot of truth in it over the years:
i was thinking just the other day
some things are better left undone
some battles better left un-won
some sad songs better left unsung
some fires are better left unfed
some pages better left unread
some words are better left unsaid
-mxpx, unsaid

it's simple, really. if you never say anything, you don't run the risk of feeling foolish.

the interesting thing is that inconvenient honesty seems to compel me to other things. it seems to open my eyes to unexpected aspects of my life that are otherwise ignored.

the past year has been a large lesson in learning not to complain. in building faith through patience. i'm hoping that my pained and awkward honesty produces useful realizations.

of all the things...

"all you need is love."
or so the saying goes.

i'm not a weeper.

anymore.

i would say that i never have been, but as i think about it, this isn't true. i cried enough to nearly drive my parents to insanity as a toddler. i spent an entire summer and then some crying when i came back from england. partially because i wasn't in england anymore, but mostly over boys. that was a lot of reshaping, and i think crying was the only way i knew how to release whatever confusion or frustration i was feeling.

but when ivan and i broke up 13... almost 14 months ago (wow, it's been that long?), i think i flipped a switch inside myself. i spent exactly one day crying over it, and never did again. in fact, i didn't even cry when i got a little bruised by recklessness during semester that followed. again, boys were involved. sure, i got my feelings hurt, but nothing that ever drove me to tears. then i cried... i mean, really cried... the day layce left. and again when arlee passed away.

but i sold or gave away everything i owned back in the states, said goodbye to everyone i loved, and missed aaron and kirsten's wedding and still didn't shed a tear. i even thought i would get a little misty when chad left (rinjani + 10 hours a day, 5 days a week might do that to a person), but nothing.

so why did i cry today over something so silly? thanks to the glories of technology, i've been able to stay in close contact with a good number of my friends back home. e-mail, text messaging, skype, facebook, blogging... i still feel close to them even when i'm so far away. this and the fact that i was so ready to be away have made adjusting to taiwan extremely easy. no need to cry, because my friends are just a skype call away, right? today, when i logged onto myspace to check some messages, i discovered an e-mail from matt. anyway, it was simple: "seriously, i miss you so much. come back." him being a man of few words in general, and even fewer words that aren't teeming with sarcasm, this was a surprise to me. and what surprised me even more was that i got all choked up and started to cry a little.

yeah, what?

he's always told me that one of the beauties of our relationship is that he can say anything to me, for no other reason than because i'm joy. over the years, the honesty has been helpful, especially since he simultaneously drives me crazy and provokes an unnatural (like spending 24 hours with k1 students and not yelling at them unnatural) amount of patience from me. and vice versa, i think.

that was a rabbit trail, but i think the reason i'm saying all this is because his comment and my reaction represent how much i miss the honesty of my friendships back in california. i lived an emotionally reckless existence back home. i wore my heart on my sleeve, never afraid to tell people that i loved them or what i thought. yes, i can tell matt anything and not worry about what it'll do to either of us, but i feel the same way about many people back home. they're the kind of relationships that allow me to be vulnerable and protected at the same time. the kind that made me feel absolutely comfortable with being myself from day one. the reason why college was such a beautiful experience... because i didn't feel like i was pretending, not even from the very first day i spent in orange. i have always felt that my friends, my true, lasting friends, have had my very best interest at heart.

despite being very happy in taiwan, i've found myself to be especially guarded. i keep things to myself that i normally wouldn't, because i'm afraid, very afraid, of revealing what i really think to anyone. i make jokes. a lot. or i say nothing. my capacity for being closed off surprised me most a few weekends ago. i noticed that i was actually trying to keep others outside my "self" bubble. and my commitment to doing so seems to know no limits. if i feel exposed, i throw out sarcasm or irony or disdain as a shield. i, joy, someone who always made it a point to be fiercely open and honest, found myself recoiling. and then i thought about it, and i've been doing it for a few months now. and i've realized that most of the things i say or do are simply incomplete. a half-hearted version of myself, because, for some reason, i think i'm just too afraid. that's so silly, but it's as if i've had a taste of what it feels like to play my cards close to the chest, and now i'm addicted to my half "self." as if i simply hope to protect myself, from what, i'm not exactly sure. but the idea of being anything else doesn't feel like an option right now. oh man, it's like being in 8th grade all over again.

and thanks to my shields, i'm definitely not a weeper.

anymore.

not gonna lie, the power feels pretty good.








.......but i much prefer the vulnerability. how do i go about trusting people enough to get it back?.....

question: why did the chicken cross the road?...

...to avoid dying of dysentery, of course.

but seriously. show of hands: who remembers that stupid question from childhood, and furthermore, who thought it to be utterly pointless and irrelevant to anything pertaining to real life. i mean, chickens don't cross roads, right?

ah, see... that's where you're wrong. clearly, you've never been to indonesia.

the concept of chickens crossing the road never made any sense to me until i found myself in the back seat of a van as it whizzed through the windy roads of lombok island, indonesia. the roads are about as wide as a one-way, one-lane street, but people in indonesia find it perfectly adequate for a 2 lane highway next to a precarious cliff overlooking the ocean. i just smile and act like i have complete faith that our driver won't lose control of the vehicle and send us plummeting over a cliff into the tropical waters below. i also act like it doesn't bother me that i don't have a seat belt. i guess people sitting in the back seat don't get one. it was on this particular car trip, just before our treacherous trek up mount rinjani, that i saw dozens of chickens cross the road. our driver honked time after time to get them to move out of the way. apparently, they're not smart enough to simply move when they see oncoming traffic, nor do they seem to learn that the road = bad. so they insist on crossing the road and just narrowly escaping an especially gruesome and squishy death.

ah, but i'm getting ahead of myself. this post, really, is about my trip to indonesia, not about chickens. but where do i begin? our harrowing car trip-slash-exercise in effective chicken-dodging tactics is merely the beginning of the many adventures chad, chris, and i experienced on this trip.

last saturday, we arrived in bali. we decided to spend our first night in kuta, a popular destination for tourists. and while the beaches of kuta are beautiful and there are many people, it is so developed that you lose a lot of indonesian personality. starbucks? dunkin donuts? pizza hut? please. if we wanted all those things, we could go back to the states. nevertheless, we discovered that there was a very good middle eastern place down the street from our bungalow, with sheesha for 4usd. 4 dollars and hookah? sign me up. we downed hummus and enjoyed our apple apple tobacco before moving on to some of the local night clubs and resorts. our first stop was ku de ta, which was right on the beach. unfortunately, despite being beautiful, it charged way too much money for drinks. by western standards, it's about right, but in indonesia, you shouldn't spend more than 3 or 4 usd for a mixed drink. feeling a bit underdressed and uncomfortable with the high prices, we moved on to two local favorites: crusoe's and Mbargo. we all enjoyed crusoe's because of the live music and the laid-back atmosphere. but it turns out that this place was also something of a brothel. it didn't take long to figure out. while i was uncomfortable as the only female non-prostitute there, i found the social interactions around me fascinating. i actually liked studying body language and male-female hierarchy. i was angered by the superiority and the sense of entitlement that the men had. even the young ones. i was saddened that the girls were so desperate and by such a degeneration of love and sex.

but then again, i was only observing.

the next day, we spent a few hours on the beach (great surfing, p.s.), before moving on to ubud, a smaller city more inland. i think that ubud was probably my favorite place. i liked our accommodations best there as well. it was quieter, less crowded, less developed, and more bohemian. we wandered through the shops and talked with the locals for a while, then made our way down to the sacred monkey forest. for 1usd, you can buy a bag of bananas to feed wild monkeys. they will come up to you and take them, and some will even sit in your lap. they're very intelligent and incredibly adorable. also, they're very spoiled in the sacred monkey forest. chad took out a banana to feed to one of them. distracted, he didn't notice that another was creeping up behind him until it snatched the entire bag from his hands. i also witnessed chris' monkey mishap. he held out a banana to offer to a monkey, but it didn't want that banana. it wanted the bag. so it tried to grab it, but chris wrestled it away. at this point, the monkey bore its teeth, showing its true colors. chris tried to give the bag back, but at this point, our monkey friend was bored. short tantrum, as it were. nevertheless, chris did manage to give it one banana, but this wasn't enough. it kept throwing said banana to the ground with contempt. spoiled, spoiled monkeys. after this, we had a lovely dinner in a garden and attended an indonesian dance show. the costume and the makeup was amazing, but i think what fascinated me most was the style of dancing. their traditional dancing tells stories through eyes, hands, fingers, and feet. there's very little movement of the entire body and very little facial expression, so the entire dance is punctuated by subtle movements. it is very beautiful and entrancing to watch.

the next day, we had an early cooking lesson at cafe wayan, an indonesian restaurant. they took us to one of their larger restaurants, where we made a 5 or 6 course meal and then ate it. the wonderful thing about the food is that we used only fresh ingredients. they actually had a garden next to the kitchen, where they could pick their spices and vegetables for the meals. the food was amazing, and we all thought that perhaps we were slipping into a food coma. we then spent some time shopping and wandering around before deciding to rent motor scooters and explore bali a little more extensively. this sounded like a lot of fun to me, though i'd never ridden one and i had to remember LEFT side. LEFT side. RIGHT turn, DANGER turn. unfortunately, my lack of experience became painfully apparent when i turned too widely and hit a parked van outside a hotel. i pretty much bounced off it. everyone could see the horror cross my face when it happened. for those who don't know, i've never hit anything in my life. never been in an accident. never received a ticket. chad and chris were quite supportive through it all, though they couldn't keep themselves from laughing. i imagine that i'll never live it down. we had to postpone our motor scooter adventure to get an estimate on fixing the bumper and the scooter. they took us to a local body shop, where they were quoted about 90usd to fix the car and 50usd to fix the bike. they promised me that if i simply paid that amount, all would be forgiven and, more importantly, forgotten. i didn't argue, because i imagined how much trouble i would have been in had this happened in the states. no international license. no license to drive a scooter. no insurance. hmmmmm. very rarely can you pay a paltry $150 to make something go away. after paying my debts and briefly seeing my life flash before my eyes, i decided to get back on and keep truckin. gotta get back on the horse, right? i am happy to report that i didn't hit anything else for the rest of our trip. we traversed the winding roads of rural bali, stopping every so often to take in the vast sprawl of rice fields around us. we also visited the "elephant caves." don't get too excited. there weren't real elephants there. it's named after ganesh, one of the hindu gods which is, surprise surprise, embodied in elephant form. there, we found a temple, pools to wash oneself before entering the sacred caves, the biggest butterfly i've ever seen in my life, and literal caves where people can go to pray and make offerings. what fascinated me most was the hindu concept of three. they have a sort of idol where one can pray (and i think make offerings to as well?), and our tour guide explained that three is an extremely important number in the hindu tradition. the three statues we saw represent creator, protector, destroyer; birth, living, death; peace with people, the divine, and nature - the view of the world within these lenses of "three" is an integral part of hinduism. very interesting.

the next day, we decided to take a long bus ride and short flight to lombok, an island not far removed from bali. it is, by and large, the road less traveled, and we wanted to experience some true island living. upon arrival, we found our accommodations for the night and set out exploring. the island of lombok is even quieter than kuta. there are far fewer tourists, but the poverty is far more apparent than on bali. i noticed that many people have almost nothing. there are also several family farms with small shacks for people to live in. it made me feel like i had so much, seeing how little they lived with.

fun fact: did you know that indonesia has the world's largest muslim population? while the island of bali is hindu, the other islands are muslim. also, did you know that people get up to pray in mosques at absurd hours like 3am? i discovered this because my hotel was next door to a mosque. wowy, prayer is noisy!

we had a delicious authentic indonesian meal, and explored our options for our stay on lombok? scuba diving or mountain climbing? scuba diving or mountain climbing? choices, choices. i had decided against scuba diving, so i left it up to the guys to decide what they wanted. if they decided to take the courses to get their padi certifications, i would either climb a mountain by myself or spend my days snorkeling, swimming, or lying on the beach. finally, we reached a consensus: we would all climb... nay, conquer... nay, bitch slap... mount rinjani. we'd already done some recreational mountain climbing in taipei. how hard could it be, right?

...i'm actually surprised to be alive after that climb.


nobody warned us about what we'd be facing, and that we would need a fair amount of materials to make this trip comfortable, if not simply possible. materials like: sweatshirts, strong hiking boots with excellent arch support, long pants, and maybe a month of steady conditioning. the trail began easy enough... climbing over roots and up a few gentle slopes. but as we progressed, the mountain became a monster of its own. by the time we realized what we were facing, we couldn't turn back... we'd come too far! we'd marched too much to turn back, but the mountain was getting steeper by the step. it began as probably a 25 degree climb for the first quarter, which then evolved into 45. that's okay, we could deal. but the next leg - the leg after lunch - was something like 50 degrees. i was so tired, i wanted to simply pass out. i'd felt like i'd lost all will to keep moving, much less keep breathing. i suppose what kept me going was chris' unfortunate bout with what can only be described as dysentery. and chad was climbing in berkenstocks. surely, if they could keep moving, i could do it too. we finally reached post 3, about 3/4 up the mountain. we would make camp there, eat dinner, then rise early the next morning to make the last 1/4 trek up to the rim at sunrise. after that, we would hike down to the bottom. unfortunately, i had a few thin sweaters that i managed to layer to generate a paltry extra heat, chris was still suffering, and chad had only his sarong, which he wore as a cape for warmth. it was a long, blustery night for us. while the company that we were going through provided a guide, porters, food, and camping equipment, we were otherwise ill-equipped for this journey. chris got his own tent, which was probably good because he was feeling so sick, so chad and i shared, and probably got about 3 hours worth of sleep combined. we shivered and turned all night long trying to generate enough warmth to go to sleep. parts of my body were so hot, they were sweating, while other extremities were so cold, they had goose bumps. somehow, we made it through our night of misery and arose in the still of darkness for the last leg of our climb. the air was the cleanest i've ever breathed. the forest was so quiet it was almost deafening. the stars were brighter than i'd ever seen them. God's glory abounded. we witnessed the sun peaking up over the mountains of bali and the ocean as we hiked. however, this hike felt pretty much vertical, on loose sand and rock. but we're troopers, and we made it to the top. looking inside an active volcano is an experience i'll never forget. everything was so green and huge and beautiful. we breathed a sigh of victory as we shivered uncontrollably in the morning cold. after about an hour marveling at the top, we headed back down to base camp. okay, so the walk down was more of a stumble/slide. i may have scars forever.

verdict? totally worth it.

at base camp, we received transport to one of the ports at lombok so that we could take a boat to the gigi islands, a few desolate beaches about 45 minutes away. on the gigis, there are no motor vehicles, and everything moves a little more slowly. the ocean is clear and the sand is white. we arrived at the port, which is a whole lot of desperation crammed into one place. everywhere, people want to carry your bags, sell you something, do anything to extract money from you. they don't even ask. they see a car pull up, and they ambush it to carry your bags so that they can charge you. finally, we managed to escape and head to gigi. in transit, we met a friendly bar promoter named jules, who helped us find our way around the island. he knew good places to go, and was generally good company. we located an adequate place to sleep, and spent the rest of the night exploring the islands, eating, and having a few drinks. unfortunately, our trek in rinjani severely caught up to me on the islands. i woke up the next day with horrible stiffness and the worst hangover i've ever experienced. i hadn't even had much to drink the night before; it was something like 3 over the course of 6 or 7 hours. i'd simply been sipping, but it all hit me horribly the next day. i think it did not mix with my fatigue and dehydration, and it produced a very uncomfortable, persistent nausea all day long. it wasn't even intense, just a prolonged discomfort. chad was also struck with the same rigor mortis-like qualities in his limbs, and we both waddled from place to place. we couldn't even go up and down stairs without bracing ourselves. as is typical with our relationship, though, we thought it was a fun game to hit each other in the thighs unexpectedly, just to elicit a response. why? team-building, we say. chris, fortunately, didn't have the same problems. he actually recovered quite well from our trek, and i'm pretty sure he deserved it after 2 days of misery. he did, however, take a tremendous (and possibly cruel) amount of pleasure laughing at chad and me as we crept along and grimaced. nevertheless, we spent a relaxing day on the beach sipping cold fresh fruit drinks and wading in and out of the water. there's something so therapeutic about the ocean for me. simply being in it makes me feel alive... like the world is exactly the way it was meant to be.

after a morning and afternoon of leisure, we headed back to lombok via boat and to bali via plane for one more night in kuta. chris treated us all to a resort and a beautiful hotel room and we had a delicious dinner. apparently, i crashed as soon as we returned to our room from dinner, but i must say that it was the deepest and most complete sleep i've had in a long while.

the next day, we wandered around bali for a few hours. chad and i had one last balinese massage, and we all bid indonesia goodbye.

indonesia is beautiful and exotic. i only wish we'd had more time to do the scuba diving and surfing, but perhaps another day. this trip was incredible, and i'm so glad i went. i feel like my world opened up even more, and i'm hoping that my heart opened a little more with it. i wouldn't change a thing.




...except maybe the scooter accident.

is that all right, is that all right, is that all right with you?

"here's lookin' at you, kid."
or so the saying goes.

gilgamesh had enkidu. orestes had pylades. david had jonathan.
and joy? well.
once upon a time, joy met layce.

"Because we have a moment here, let me tell you that I have recently become a secret connoisseur of 'last looks'. You know the way people look at you when they believe it's for the last time? I've started collecting these looks. "
-drew, elizabethtown


there is no good way of saying it, of ever saying goodbye. i thought having this semester off would prepare me, but it all happened so fast - much faster than i thought it would. "you're my best friend, and i don't know how to express how much i will miss you. deeply. unequivocally. immeasurably." i wanted to say it, but i couldn't. it was too much. too many last looks in one day. "i love you, but i don't know how to do anything about it. i'm stuck, within myself and all the things i want." a combination of liberation and the stifling boundaries of being stuck inside the desire for something bigger, something more, and the hope that today, or any day, what we want will line up again. i love you, more than you could ever understand, but merely saying the words isn't enough. if i love you this much, why would i ever leave? they say that when you have this, if you're smart, you'll never let it go. i try not to think of it that way. i try to hold onto the hope that we let each other go because it's unselfish. because it's what you do if it really is love. i'm only sorry it took 20 years to find you, and 21 to love you and everything you contribute to my life. it seemed too long, and i hope you know that, despite it all, knowing you made that pain worth it. we both know that if it hadn't hurt that much, you and i wouldn't exist. i wish you'd been there to see it happen: the ups and downs, and the almost unnatural cruelty of extracting him. i always thought that extraction of him would lead to a different, better him, but it led me to you instead. despite my complaining, i ask myself always, what would i do without you? all the years of not being picked finally led me to you. you, the one who takes my side. flannery said that a good man is hard to find. and he is, but i've met good men. but a woman like you, a good friend like you, someone who is as consistent as you. you're the kind of person that takes 20 years to find. i know, because i've looked.

i'm gonna miss you, like i miss the ocean when i go to sleep, man it's gonna break my heart - mason jennings

"the first cut is the deepest."
or so the saying goes.

today's predominant topic of conversation was a reflection of the difficulty of finding truly faithful people. nobody's perfect, but i've realized how much i've come to accept a second-string role. not that acceptance doesn't frustrate me at times. i'm simply well-acquainted with the concept of other people getting picked over me. i think i can be a good friend, but i do realize that i become increasingly apathetic when i start to notice a few patterns. things like: not getting a phone call, making plans and having them broken for other people (unless it's the queen of england, this really shouldn't happen, and even then, you might want to ask if your friend can come along), consistently having others picked before me, or general boredom. yes, even in college, it turns out that some social constructs really never change.

my mom always used to tell me that i should feel lucky if i can find one truly faithful person who will always, no matter what, pick me first. she said a good way to conceptualize this is to imagine every person i know has won an amazing, all-expense paid trip to hawaii, but can only take one person. who do i think they'd pick? if i think it would be me, there's my answer. the disheartening truth is, however, that one of those people is moving away in about two weeks. i've said it once, twice, a dozen times, and i'll reiterate: i'm absolutely not okay with it. i'm going to feel a profound void when she's gone. she's my ally. my solution for today, however, is to live in denial.

i've usually been an advocate of many chances. and i know as well as anyone that nobody's perfect. but i'm finding that as school begins to fade away, i need to be more selective about some of the people in my life. not selective about who i should treat with kindness. that's everyone. or about who i should see, because i will see or spend time with a variety of people. but about who i feel is worth my genuine effort. about what i say. and about surrounding myself with people who encourage, edify, and challenge me. those people are difficult to find, but they are worth more than 10 of those who make me feel anxious or insecure.

i struggle with forward motion

"don't count your chickens before they've hatched."
or so the saying goes.

it's finally happening. i think i'm finally crashing. the truth is, i thought i was too far beyond this for it to catch up with me. anybody who knows me will tell you that i'm a fighter, that i believe i am in control of my circumstances. life, love, happiness, and being okay are a choice, and i actively choose them all. i'm of the "it's not something you feel, it's something you do" school of thought. truthfully, i have not shed a single tear since september 30, 2006. i had somehow convinced myself that it was a competition; i needed to care even less than he seemed to care that day. and i resolved myself to feeling nothing, because it didn't deserve my attention. as badly as i knew it hurt, i was not going to let it affect me, and i was going to make it make me into a better person.

the funny thing is that i have realized that there are an infinite number of ways to not have to confront a situation. i kept telling myself that i'd face it eventually.
after my birthday.
after that paper.
after that presentation.
after school.
after christmas.
when the new year came.
when i was back in orange county.
after i was done saying goodbye to kyle.
when heather got back from london.
after las vegas.
when i heard from the jet program.
when school began for everyone.
after i'd paid the bills.
after thursday night... next week.
after the jet interview.
maybe after i hung out with some people.
after my date.

it destroyed me inside to hear the things he said, in the manner in which he said them, a week after i told myself that i could do this.

so i supposed that if i could just feel beautiful, act beautiful, want to be beautiful, have others confirm that i'm beautiful, then ultimately, truthfully, deep down, i would be fine. and i thought that this time, this time, i had done something right, because i was more okay than i had ever been. the reality of my situation is, however, that nobody escapes such a confrontation without being hurt. and my choice would be to get hurt in the beginning, or later on, painfully all at once, or let it stretch out.

even though i know that a part of me has crashed inside, i haven't let myself cry, because i feel that, in some small way, that means he wins, that he mattered more to me than i did to him. and it infuriates me to my very core. it's a relief to know that i'm okay and that i am, honestly, over it. i know it every time i have a conversation with another guy, i can feel it, because i never, ever let myself think about him with even the slightest affection when i'm talking to someone else. and i never want to go back.

my friend told me today that it's okay: we're allowed to be sad because that's just part of the whole painful process. it doesn't make me any weaker. and i suppose i've finally come to terms with this. i think that a part of me is simply annoyed, put off if you will, that this occupies any of my thoughts at any time of the day, that i'm wasting any energy on it.

mentally, i know that it hurt. mentally, i know i'm okay with being sad and letting it go in the process. but something wells up inside me every time that blocks it, that tells me no no no no you will not succumb to this, because your life is so much better now. look, it's made you into a better person, so why cry? maybe one day i will cry; cry because it's simply part of acceptance. then again, maybe i won't have to. maybe every day, it seems a little more absurd to do so. i haven't decided how i feel, other than that i'm simply surprised, and perhaps simply disappointed. that's okay, right? it's okay to feel that way, isn't it?

maybe i'm simply having a bad week. i suppose we all have those once in a while. a bad day or a bad shift or a bad drunken experience or a bad date or a bad phone call or a bad meal. on so many levels, i feel a little like there's something off about my life, but i can't identify what it is. i'm in transition, on so many levels, and maybe every so often, we grasp for normalcy, for a time when we thought something was dependable. i've believed since as long as life got a little more complicated than it used to be, however, that movement is important; that so long as i move, i am open to wherever He might want to move me. i want to stave off complacency, to be excited, and to know that i'm ready for whatever happens next. we all doubt; it's a part of the human experience. and it's been one of those weeks when i simply wanted to grasp for something or someone who knows exactly what it feels like to go from knowing and having specific purpose and motivation to complete self-reliance. so long as everyone else has school and tests, i'm not sure that they can know. i've wanted so badly to talk to someone to can confirm that it's supposed to be this confusing, to feel this awkward. he understands, but opening that door jeopardizes all my progress.

people say that there is no God or that He left us all to our own devices, but i can't believe that is true. stop trying so hard to answer these questions, because He always provides. stop answering them your own way, for He will give them in a better way. i am trying to have more faith in the answers he provides, especially in all ways i don't expect. today, i was drinking coffee, and evan, who i never see, sat down with me at starbucks and we talked about how it feels to be done with school. it was good to know, if even on the surface, that my feelings weren't unusual, that it was okay to be confused and to struggle with motivation. movement. seek, and you will not go unanswered. desire and ask, and you will be satisfied.

i dare you to move
i dare you to move
i dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
i dare you to move
i dare you to move
like today never happened before

it's so difficult, when you just want to lie down and say "this will pass, it always does." and i believe it does, but it's not how i operate. but movement, saying "i'm ready to be better and i'm ready to do what i know is right, just please please answer me..." God has always answered me. and the desire to know in my own way dissipates.