Grocery Store Man

(December 31,2021)

I first noticed your energy and spirit. You were a personable human, no doubt. Asking me about my day, smiling during the whole bit. And when I asked if your grocery-store-day was busy, you raised your eyebrows, and then your eyes, and dared me to look into them and judge what I thought based on how crazed they were. We both laughed, and you carried on with your bagging.

You had pink hair, and when I looked into your eyes, I noticed your eyebrows were shaved a bit back and purposely thinned out and plucked in odd places. I wondered if it was style that made you take that choice, a desire to be different, or maybe it was nervous habit, or a moment of panic that you had the night before when you were alone. I did not know. But it made me care about you all the more. 

We all are alone at times. It’s never an if but a when. And I wondered who you were when you were alone. Were you as spirited and enthusiastic? Or were you lonely, scared, sad? We put on fronts with people, but we all look quite the same when we’re by ourselves and quiet. When it’s just us and our thoughts. 

Whoever you are, grocery store man, I wondered who you were when no one was watching, when you weren’t commenting on my nail polish and putting on an energetic show of care and interest. Know that I am quite similar to you when I’m all alone, though we might seem quite different at a party. You silently making a meal, sitting on your bed, watching your favorite show at night, reading a book, scrolling on your phone, doesn’t look much different from me when I’m silently making a meal, sitting on my bed, watching my favorite show, reading a book, and scrolling on my phone.

Know that though you may be alone at times, you have a person or two thinking about you when you’re alone, so you’re not quite alone after all, are you? And I guess I’m not either.

A Gloom I Can’t Defeat

(Started: December 31, 2019 | Finished: September 03, 2022)

I want to be hopeful 

Not dogmatic or sad

So tired of being tired 

I want rest at last

Each moment of joy 

Seems threaded with pain

I just want the laughter 

Without a blemish of shame

Each time I conquer it

It seems to come back 

I could be peaceful 

But then I hear it laugh

Won’t this cloud of heaviness

Relent or go away

‘Cause no matter where I run

It’s still biting at my legs

It’s a weight I can’t wrestle

And a gloom I can’t defeat 

But then light tears the curtain

And love again speaks

I guess You heard me calling 

When I was wailing in my car

Gave me purpose for living

Eyes to find light in the dark

Things, again given meaning

No longer objects of scorn

A gift to just be breathing

Thinking began to reform

Life became less about doing 

More about looking around

Each piece was undeserved

Down to my next heart pound

There’s always hope to be had

No matter what future brews

‘Cause the future has purpose

It’s never absent of You

Love

(November 1, 2021)

I have come to realize that most terrible people are so because they have had little love shown to them in life, so they know not what it means to love. Either that, or if they were shown love, their heart was never made soft enough to receive it and let it change them. For it does take a bit of humility to accept real, honest love.

When you let love in, it will break your heart. It will find every crack in that hard, calloused rock and seep in. And from the inside out, it will tear open the stone and pull it apart piece by piece.

But then, it will reclothe the naked, crying thing, with a thick and comforting blanket full of protection, made with wrapped presents, warm drinks, and a fireplace in a hospitable home. And your heart feels seen for once. 

And once you have experienced this, you cannot help but hope to be that love-breaking, love-ripping, love-changing thing in someone else’s life.

Silhouettes

(August 12, 2020)

I kind of have an obsession with silhouettes. When hanging out with me past 6 o’clock, you’ll usually find my eyes drifting onto the edges of mountains, to the arms of trees, or to the top points of buildings. I’ll stare at humans in the distance jumping and playing, and I swear I can hear the laughter and shouts coming from them though I’m a mile away. I know not their name or life, but I know them to be the timeless spirits of human beings living their beautiful life.

A silhouette is a meek yet bold sort of thing. It is as if the spirit of the object is humbly saying, “here I am in my truest form.” My eyes notice no color or discolor, no rip or mend, no living or dead leaf, no broken or fixed window, but simply the spirit of the object itself: the spirit of the building, the spirit of the tree, the spirit of a human. The silhouette does not ask to be looked at, it does not flicker any light at your eye, and yet, when you notice it (the edges, the bold points against the backdrop of blue and yellow hues), it’s as if the object rewards you for noticing. It shows you its truest, most basic form, a timeless form, that will be taken on again by another tree, another building, or another human after it. It no longer stands as a colorful dot on the horizon, but it becomes a part of the bigger shape of this earth; it becomes an edge to this universe.

I Envy Her Freedom

(May 7, 2019)

I’ve always wanted to travel. To fly with the wind and blow with the sand. To wear boots that crunch and have tough hands that climb. To have dirt on my pants and clothes that withstand. 

I watch her life. She is not tied down. Her hair is always a little tangled, and her face looks wrinkled and freckled by the sun. Her naked eyes dance because of the things she’s seen. 

I want to be her, and yet, I don’t. She’s always traveling. In fact, I don’t know if she’s ever stopped, settled, been faithful. They say she’s flighty. She’s unreliable. She wants to be where things are happening, not where things have happened. She has no roots. She’s never stayed anywhere long enough to let them grow. I’ve always kind of envied her in a sense. No obligations, no expectations, no one waiting up for you, no need to “follow through.”... freedom.

Is that freedom? Freedom from what? People?

She has people around her, but only when she wants—she finds them when they will get her from point A to point B. They have become her trains, her cars, her roads. 

She has seen many things. I have longed to have her eyes, her ears, her nose. I wish to have seen those same scenes, heard those same sounds, sniffed those same scents. She has hungry eyes that are never quite satisfied.

But maybe it’s not so much about the quantity of what you see but the quality? I am not entirely convinced, but maybe I’m onto something. To see every type of terrain and culture must be something quite breathtaking and informing... but at the same time, to have the eye quickly pass over something must also mean that you missed the hidden nuances of both beauty and ugliness found within those things.

One might be informed from their experience, but to be changed and enlightened is entirely different—this requires immersion. This requires roots to grow. This requires quality of experience; it requires time, obligation, dependency, reliability. To learn and be learned from, requires commitment and hardship. You have to sit amongst a culture to understand it; you have to participate in a community to grow from it. Observing from afar can give us an impression too easily manipulated by our own lens of interpretation. The same goes for a place. A person who walks every street will know the crevices of a city and the stones that make it strong. The one who flies over that same city will know it, but only to a certain degree—by the tops of its buildings.

So I guess establishing roots and settling in one place for a while, doesn’t mean you see less, it just means you see different. You may not see the layer of dirt that covers the mountains in the west to the valleys in the east, but instead, you see every grain of sand that reaches down far below the surface. You know each rock and pebble that tightly pushes and faithfully holds your roots. And you see and feel the water under the surface that fills those roots, making them satisfied and thriving. And these are the things that are missed when she doesn’t stay long enough to let herself settle in and grow with her surroundings. And these “pebbles” and “rocks” and “water,” are people and obligations and hardship.

But I guess a person is always giving up something at the cost of another. Quality versus quantity, and to each their own.

The Privilege of Getting to Know Someone

(March 21, 2019)

May we not forget the privilege of getting to know someone. They do not get that same privilege, being trapped inside their own mind. They don’t know how unique they are. The influence they have. The ways they impress and amuse others. They are unaware of how many people look up to them and why. They are used to themselves and don’t recognize their brilliance and originality.

But we get to experience that, something they never will. I wish my favorite of people could experience that privilege of getting to know themselves.